


part three: amuse bouche

by andnowforyaya



Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [4]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Supernatural Elements, Blood and Injury, Forests, M/M, Panic Attacks, Trauma, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-25
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:40:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 24,363
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23777746
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andnowforyaya/pseuds/andnowforyaya
Summary: “Your spell worked,” Ten had told him.Ten's back, but Kun's view into this strange, magical world is expanding, and Kun grapples with new lessons and dreams, new dangers and nightmares.
Relationships: Chittaphon Leechaiyapornkul | Ten/Qian Kun, Dong Si Cheng | WinWin/Wong Yuk Hei | Lucas, Moon Taeil/Suh Youngho | Johnny
Series: book one: recipes for your werewolf boyfriend [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1517177
Comments: 226
Kudos: 480





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for waiting! hope you like this part :)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please take note of tags!

The drive back to Kun’s cabin in Xuxi’s car was not a long one. Kun sank lower into the passenger seat and let his forehead bounce off the glass of the window, head spinning with the events of the past couple of days. The bookstore, the dreams, the storm, the arrows. Johnny’s magic, Taeil’s inhuman speed, Ten’s shuddering frame in the bathtub. It was all starting to blur together. “Your spell worked,” Ten had told him. 

There was an entirely new universe expanding in the garden of Kun’s brain, its spiraling galaxies reaching out like tendrils on a vine seeking soft matter to latch onto and grow. Would this new universe replace everything Kun once knew, like an invasive weed? He looked sidelong at Xuxi and saw the boy he’d grown up with, his best friend, floppy-haired and bright-eyed and so very, very human. He didn't want to lose Xuxi. There had to be a way he could keep the mundane and familiar and make room for the new.

“Do you -- do you  _ remember  _ calling me during the storm and telling me you thought Taeil was a vampire?” Xuxi asked, chuckling, as they pulled into Kun’s snow-covered driveway. The uneven gravel underneath the layer of snow made the car jerk from side to side as they eased along the path, so Kun had to raise his head from the glass lest he give himself a concussion. 

Kun let out a long sigh of exasperation. He was completely depleted. When Xuxi had burst into the kitchen and seen Taeil, Kun had been certain that Xuxi would have caught the way Taeil’s shadow lagged behind his movement, would have noticed the way Taeil’s eyes flashed like there were mirrors behind them, and, as such, would have known that he was dangerous, but Xuxi had seen the chocolate cake batter Taeil was preparing and had eyes for little else. 

It had felt like Kun was watching a movie playing out in front of him on a television screen, one where he knew the ending but couldn’t warn any of the characters about what he knew, what lay before them. So he watched as Taeil smiled and introduced himself and offered to fix Kun and Xuxi a pot of tea. 

He watched as Xuxi sat at the kitchen table where Ten had been bleeding out and convulsing. It was now spotless. When had Taeil cleaned? How much time had passed? 

Kun had moved on autopilot, taking the seat beside Xuxi. The three of them shared pleasantries about Vancouver, the snow, and the storm. He learned through Xuxi that it had been an entire day since the storm had passed, and Xuxi had called Kun approximately 68 times on his phone and Kun hadn’t picked up once. Taeil chimed in then, saying he’d invited Kun to stay over to weather out the storm with company, and Kun had forgotten his phone. By the time he remembered, the storm was at its peak. The explanation -- the lie -- seemed to go over well. 

Not that Kun could have mustered enough coherency to tell Xuxi the truth. He was experiencing everything as though through a layer of plastic, and his brain was lagging. Their words were muffled before they reached his ears; their movements, unpredictable and jerky. Then Taeil had looked at Kun, the message crystal clear in his stern glare through the haze:  _ don’t tell anyone what happened here.  _ The threat behind the message was even clearer.

Taeil puttered about the kitchen, setting a kettle to boil and pouring batter into the cake tin. When the oven shrilled to indicate that it had reached the right temperature for baking, Taeil slid the cake tin inside. Kun’s ears rang even after Taeil turned off the signal, while Taeil asked Xuxi questions about his veterinary practice. The normalcy of it all was throwing Kun off-balance. Just yesterday, he’d watched Taeil’s partner perform a spell that extracted silver from Ten’s veins. He’d been chased and hunted with poison-tipped arrows. He’d held Ten on this table, his body slippery with blood.

Then the stairs had creaked, and Kun had turned in his seat to find Ten standing in the kitchen doorway. Johnny’s shirt hung huge on his frame. His hair was a wild mess, flat on one side and sticking up everywhere on the other. He blinked his golden eyes at Kun, and in his periphery Kun noticed Taeil go completely still.

The fog in his brain cleared immediately, as though sucked out of him with a vacuum.

“Ten,” Taeil said. “What are you doing? We have guests.”

Ten sagged against the door frame. “Kun, come back upstairs,” he whined quietly, crossing his arms and hugging himself. He looked lost and lonely and Kun’s entire heart shattered at the sight of him in that shirt. And then he realized Ten wasn’t wearing any pants.

Kun cleared his throat and spared a glance at Xuxi, who looked like he was about ready to explode with joy. His friend snickered sneakily at Kun, raising his eyebrows in question, and Kun could only allow his cheeks to go pink as he rose and went to Ten, bundling him up against him and guiding him back up the stairs.

“He’s Johnny’s cousin,” Kun heard Taeil say in the kitchen. “So sorry, we’re still house-training him.”

Xuxi laughed at the seemingly innocuous and good-natured joke. “Cousin, you say?” Xuxi asked, and then their voices tapered off as Kun and Ten reached the top of the stairs. Kun hoped against hope that Xuxi wouldn’t say anything about Kun’s insistence the other night that Ten was Wolfie in front of Taeil.

“Slow down,” Ten grunted, his body going heavy for a moment, his head lolling back. Kun braced them both against the banister before Ten could collapse, and worriedly brushed his fingers through Ten’s wild hair as Ten caught his breath. “Oh.”

“What’s wrong?” Kun whispered frantically. “What is it? Are you hurt?” He checked Ten over for injuries. Maybe they’d missed something before.

“Dizzy,” Ten mumbled. He pressed himself against Kun’s body and dug his nose into the center of Kun’s chest, inhaling deeply. “Need a moment.”

“Take your time. I have you.” He held Ten against himself and felt how each curve was a place for Ten to fill. Ten lazily nuzzled his way up Kun’s chest, until his head was resting on Kun’s shoulder and their arms were wrapped around each other’s waists. The string tugged on Kun’s heart. It was the same feeling as finally finding North on a compass while lost in the woods.

And then he lost it again.

“What is this?” Ten asked. Kun shivered when he Ten’s fingers gently brushing over his collarbones and the skin above it. “You’re hurt.”

Hurt? His fingers rose up to his own neck, pressing against tender bruises. He winced at the memory of Taeil slamming him against the wall with the blade of his hand digging into his neck, stifling a gasp as he remembered how it felt for his throat to be crushed under that force, for his lungs to burn. He choked out, “It’s fine, Ten. I’m fine.”

“Who?”

“It’s nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Kun--”

Whatever Ten had been about to say was lost in a groan when his knees buckled again, the sudden drop nearly making them both fall to the floor. Kun tightened his hold around Ten and shushed him. “We’ll talk about it later. You need to rest.”

“Tell me,” Ten said shakily. His breath flickered across the skin of Kun’s neck, as tangible as his fingertips were. They made their way into the bedroom and fell onto the bed, Ten immediately wrapping his legs around Kun’s thighs and locking his heels together to keep him snug against him.

Kun didn’t mind being handled like a stuffed bear in a claw-machine. He turned in Ten's hold and saw how the setting sun made it look like Ten was wearing a crown of fire. As he took in the worried look on Ten’s face, Kun let himself forget about the arrows, the x’s, and the hunters. About Xuxi and Taeil downstairs. They’d found Ten, finally, and that was what mattered. He would do everything he could now to keep him safe, and that meant not telling him Taeil was the one who’d crushed his windpipe because he could be entirely sure that Ten would confront Taeil, and he couldn’t be sure at all how Taeil would react to Ten confronting him. 

“It’s not important.” Kun shushed him, and Ten’s frown grew, but his eyelids were already drooping. 

Ten’s cheek was soft and plump under his hand. When he blinked, each blink lasted longer and longer, until Ten yawned hugely like a puppy in a soft bed. Kun chuckled, thinking that was what Ten was exactly. He arched forward to kiss the tip of Ten’s nose.

“Sleep, you need it.”

“Stay,” Ten whispered, voice a rasp.

“I can’t. I have to make sure Xuxi and Sicheng are okay. But I’ll come back right tomorrow. I promise.”

“When?”

“As soon as you wake up,” Kun said. He brushed his thumb over the curve of Ten’s cheek, back and forth, as Ten’s fingers drew circles across the small of Kun’s back. “I’ll have breakfast ready and waiting for you.”

“Can you make steak?” Ten asked, his words starting to slur. 

“Steak, and eggs, and potatoes,” Kun muttered. “Whatever you want. 12 courses for breakfast, just for you.”

“Mmm,” Ten sighed. His breathing deepened as sleep overcame him. 

Kun waited until he was sure Ten was out, and then he slowly extricated himself from Ten’s hold. He folded the blankets over Ten’s body so that he wouldn’t get cold, and then had a little laugh to himself when he remembered that Ten ran hot as a furnace pretty much all the time. 

Before he left the room, he rummaged through Johnny’s closet in search of a turtleneck sweater he could change into, and found a forest green one rolled up and stuffed in a drawer with other soft sweaters. It smelled like pine. He was fairly certain Johnny wouldn’t mind him borrowing it. If he rolled up the sleeves twice, it didn’t look too baggy on him. And it covered the bruises on his neck. He folded the shirt he’d been wearing and, remembering how Ten had once told him he smelled like  _ safety  _ to him, left it by Ten’s head on the pillow before bending over Ten’s form and kissing him once, softly, on the forehead.

By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, the cake was cooling on the kitchen table and Xuxi was eyeing it hungrily. 

“So,” Xuxi said smugly, perking up when he saw that Kun was hovering at the threshold. “How’s Ten doing?”

“He fell back asleep,” Kun said. Taeil was rinsing out their mugs of tea in the sink. It felt so strange to see him doing harmless household things, so dissonant. Kun wondered how quickly Taeil would change if he knew that Kun had told Xuxi everything. Kun was quite certain Taeil would have no problem killing him and Xuxi both to keep their secrets safe.  He swallowed painfully around a suddenly dry throat. He needed to get Xuxi out of here. “Actually, I was thinking we should head back to mine? Sicheng must be wondering what’s keeping you. And we can do dinner together or something.”

“Yeah, you should totally feed us for coming all the way out here!”

“That’s the idea.”

Aside from Taeil promising to bring some cake around to him tomorrow, they left without much fanfare, though Kun’s heart lurched around inside of himself every time he thought of how he was leaving Ten behind in the house with Johnny and Taeil, whom he still didn't completely trust, on the way home.

Now, he and Xuxi were stepping out of Xuxi’s car, snow crunching underfoot. “I just don’t even get why your mind would go there,” Xuxi was saying. “Taeil? A vampire? He’s like the nicest dude I’ve ever met. Kinda boring, but nice.”

Kun shivered as a blast of cold air whipped across his driveway, sending the top layer of snow up into a cloud of ice that whirled around them. He thought about how easily Taeil lifted him up from his feet and held him by his neck against the wall. Nice, huh?

“That was...that was a weird night for me,” Kun said. It wasn’t exactly a lie. They trudged through the snow together towards the house, Kun taking two steps for each one of Xuxi's long strides. “Listen, you didn’t tell anyone about my wild story that night, did you? I think I was just -- maybe it was something I drank or ate--”

Xuxi waved at the house, and Kun looked up from his feet disappearing in the snow to find Sicheng shivering and stamping his feet right inside the wide-open front door. “Just Sicheng,” Xuxi said privately, to Kun. “We were worried, man.”

“I know, I know.” Kun shook his head, the words coming more easily as the lie spun its fabric inside of his head. “But now I’m embarrassed. I’d just watched some documentary or movie and the storm was coming and I’d had some wine to drink. And I really did have magic mushroom tea from the bookstore the other day and I think I was just kinda -- reeling. You know? Maybe it was a side effect from the trip. Can you please not tell anyone else about it?”

“So you  _ really  _ took shrooms?” Xuxi asked gleefully. “You should have done this sooner, look at you! Living your best life, getting high, falling in love--”

From the doorway, Sicheng snapped, “Get in here! It’s cold!” and pulled Xuxi inside by the arm. Kun trailed behind, stomping the snow from his boots, but gasped when he Sicheng yanked him against his chest in a strong hug that squeezed his rib cage together. “You had us worried! And what’s this about you falling in love?”

Kun stiffened as Xuxi barked in laughter. “Yeah, why don’t you tell us more about Ten, Kun?” his friend suggested. 

Sicheng pulled back, raising his eyebrows at Kun. “Wait, so Ten’s real?”

“Very real. And very tiny. With no regard for pants.”

Despite himself, Kun laughed at how each of those statements were entirely true about Ten. He was real, and he was tiny, and he had no regard for pants. 

“You’re blushing!” Xuxi accused, pointing a finger at him as they hung up their coats and unlaced their boots.

“I’m not! It’s the cold,” Kun countered. “And don’t tell Ten to his face that he’s tiny. He’ll bite your finger off.”

“Hah,” Xuxi huffed. “Because he’s a wolf, right?”

Sicheng herded them into the living room to sit after shedding their outer layers. “This again?”

Xuxi bounced on the sofa cushions while Kun slowly lowered himself into the armchair, knowing what was coming. “Wait. Wait, wait, wait. You didn’t hear about how Kun had a bad trip on mushrooms and that’s why he made up this whole story!”

“You  _ what _ ?!”

“It was the tea,” Kun said calmly, smoothing his hands over the cushion underneath him to ground him to the rough fabric against his palms. “I had some tea, some wine, and a bad trip, I guess. The storm didn’t help…Don’t tell people I had a weird trip, okay? It’s embarrassing.”

“Just tell us about the part where you fell in love with Taeil’s husband’s cousin, Ten.”

Kun felt the blush deepen in his cheeks. Heat crawled up the sides of his ears. In love? Was this what being in love was like? Kun’s last relationship now felt like a flimsy cardboard cutout when compared to the bond he had with Ten. He missed Ten that whole time he was gone, was consumed by the need to find him. It was like a part of his soul had been cleaved from him and thrown out to sea, and Kun would have scoured the oceans to find that piece that would make him whole again. But it felt so fast to call something like that love. It felt more like desperation. “I don’t know if it’s  _ love… _ ”

“Please, the way your face changed when he walked into the kitchen? That’s love. I mean, he was also not wearing any pants, so, like, you perv.”

Sicheng, snug against Xuxi’s side on the couch, smacked his thigh. “Don’t make fun of Kun for falling in love.  _ He’s in love _ ,” he teased. Kun rolled his eyes as the couple giggled at each other on his couch.

“Can you not?”

“So how long have you known Ten?”  His friends looked at him with so much earnestness and hope, hanging on his next word.

Kun chewed on the inside of his cheek, thinking. Now was his chance to tell a story they could believe in, a chance to keep them both in the dark about what he’d discovered in the woods, about Ten and the others, about himself. He was reminded of Taeil’s eyes glinting like light off the sharp end of a knife. 

“I’ve known him for a little while, to be honest,” Kun started slowly, still perched on the edge of the armchair cushion while he pieced together his story. Wasn’t it that the best lies were the ones that were closest to the truth? “He visited a couple of weeks back..and now he’s been staying with them.”

“Oh?”

“Yeah, we’ve hung out a few times…”

“And are you sleeping with him?” Xuxi asked bluntly. He only looked at Sicheng with a deadpan expression when his boyfriend slapped his thigh again. “What? He came down to ask for Kun, and then you went back upstairs and you were gone  _ a while _ , okay?”

Kun stood and mimed zipping his lips together and throwing away the key, amused by the look of betrayal on Xuxi’s face and exasperation on Sicheng’s. In truth, he needed a moment to get the sudden, searing image of Ten pouncing on him and swiveling his hips against his ass out of his head. Damn it, Xuxi. “I’m gonna get a beer. You guys want beers?”

“Don’t avoid the question!” Xuxi called after him as Kun slipped into the kitchen. “And yes!”

“I found your phone and left it on the counter! It’s dead,” Sicheng added. 

Kun ambled toward the counter, taking his phone up into his hand. It was ice cold to the touch, and he shivered like the chill had settled deep within his bones when a breeze whispered across his skin. Looking to his left, Kun noticed that the window was open at the bottom, and thoughts of Ten overpowering him in bed flew from his mind as he rushed over and pushed the window shut. Salt crunched underneath the pane. How long had the window been open? 

“Kun, you can take as long as you want, but you’ll have to tell us eventually!” Xuxi yelled suddenly, his loud voice making Kun twitch in surprise. 

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Kun replied hastily, striding to the fridge to take out three beers while his heart did jumping jacks inside of his chest. He took the bottles out of the fridge but had to hurriedly place them on the counter when they nearly slipped from his lax, trembling grip. His hands were shaking. 

“Dammit,” he cursed under his breath at himself, leaning on the counter with his elbows and squeezing his hands together tightly to stop the tremor. He was just tired and shaken, he reasoned. And Xuxi was loud. 

He took a breath, and then another, and then another, until the trembling had passed enough for him to be able to rummage through the silverware drawer to find a bottle opener. As he brought these things with him into the living room, he drawled, “And I don’t have to tell you anything, nosy ass.”

“But we’re your best friends,” Sicheng said imploringly, batting his lashes as he took two of the bottles from Kun and handed one over to Xuxi. Kun gave Xuxi the bottle opener. He didn’t trust he had enough control over his fingers to do it himself. Luckily, his friend thought nothing of the gesture and popped the caps from the bottles easily. The three of them clinked beers before Kun took his seat in the armchair again. “And we drove all the way out here just to check on you.”

Kun sighed. The beer was cold relief as it trickled down his throat. “Yeah, I know. Thank you for doing that. So you’re staying the night, then?”

“Of course,” Xuxi laughed. “You can tell us about Ten now or you can tell us later. Up to you.”

Kun thumbed the smooth neck of the bottle in his hands, playing with the condensation there. In the brief silence, both Xuxi and Sicheng leaned forward in their seats like eager children enraptured by a fairytale. Kun tucked his chin to his chest and smiled to himself. It reminded him of Ten sticking his nose over Kun’s shoulder as he cooked something on the stove, of Ten curled up with his head in Kun’s lap staring intently the action movie blazing across the television screen, of Ten reading food magazines in the living room and shoving the pages in front of Kun’s face when there was a word he didn’t recognize so that he could learn it, while Kun chipped away at chapters of his cookbook on his laptop. His heartbeat echoed in his ears.

“I’m not sleeping with him,” Kun said finally. “But I really like him. We haven’t even really, er, talked about it.” Kun remembered, suddenly, Ten’s foot in the doorway, his hands on the door frame to keep Kun from pushing him out of the house the first time he’d shifted in front of him.  _ I’m yours,  _ Ten had said then. And really, what was Kun supposed to make of that? He continued haltingly, “He’s -- we’ve got a lot to figure out. We’re taking it slow. Like, really slow.”

Xuxi nodded sagely. “Ah, he’s not from around here, is he? Don’t want to get too attached if the long-distance thing doesn’t work?”

“Um, something like that.”

“Take it as slow as you need, man,” Sicheng offered with a sympathetic shrug. “After Ming, I’m glad you’re putting yourself out there again. He was kind of an asshat.”

“He wasn’t that bad--”

“He was crazy jealous of your success!” Sicheng said, growing heated and sitting up straighter. Kun saw how Xuxi’s arm slipped behind Sicheng’s waist, as though he’d be ready to grab him by the back of the shirt if he suddenly lunged out of his seat. 

“I’ve been down that road, Sicheng,” Kun said firmly. “I don’t want to go down there again.”

Sicheng sank back with a frown but leaned into Xuxi’s hold, sighing. “Fine.”

The mood soured. Kun played with the condensation around his beer bottle again as the tense silence wore on, and Xuxi looked between the two of them, his concern making lines form in his forehead.

“Hey, tell us about your book, though?” Xuxi tried in a light voice. “How’s that going? And what are you feeding us tonight?”

“Pasta bolognese,” Kun said, grateful for the graceful change in topic. 

“But doesn’t that take hours?”

“Yeah, which is why I have to get started now. You can help me if you want. I could use a sous chef.” 

“Pfft, take him," Sicheng offered up his boyfriend. "I’ll watch TV or something -- I drove the whole way so I’m exempt from more chores,” Sicheng said, already shifting on the couch so that he could push Xuxi off of it with his feet.

“Hey! I’m going, I’m going--!” Xuxi stood with a laugh, and Sicheng made himself long and comfortable over the couch cushions, sticking his tongue out at them both. “Cooking with Kun isn’t a chore, it’s an opportunity for self-development,” Xuxi said, like a parent scolding a child for calling something stupid that they didn’t understand. Kun chuckled when Xuxi even wagged his finger at Sicheng.

“Blah, blah. Go cook me some fancy spaghetti, boyfriend.” Sicheng kicked out a long leg in Xuxi’s direction to spur him on, and Xuxi fled, giggling as he took Kun by the elbow and led them both into the kitchen.

“He just doesn’t understand food like we do,” Xuxi said sadly. Kun patted his arm in sympathy. Their playful bickering was a return to the mundane and routine and a welcome respite from the whirlwind of strangeness, and magic, and terror that had preceded his friends’ arrival, but Kun’s mind couldn’t help but keep returning to the three supernatural beings who lived in the house down the road from him.

The vampire, the witch, and the werewolf. Like if Narnia had been rewritten as a nightmare, the monsters in the wardrobe made real.

.

“We can take the couch. It’s really not a big deal.” Sicheng hovered by the doorway to Kun’s bedroom on the second floor as Kun stripped the sheets from his mattress. 

“No way. With how big Xuxi is, I’d be too worried that if the two of you spend the night on the couch, he’d crush you.”

“Hey! I can hold my own,” Sicheng said with a small, shy grin. He tiptoed forward and helped Kun put a fresh fitted sheet over the corners of the mattress. It was still warm from the dryer. They worked in quiet harmony, snickering when the quiet was interrupted by Xuxi’s slightly off-key and enthusiastic singing in the shower. 

“I’m sorry for bringing up Ming,” Sicheng mumbled.

Kun paused from where he was fluffing up his pillows.

“And I’m sorry for bringing him up again just now.”

Shaking his head, Kun finished arranging the pillows and said with all the honesty he could muster, “He is so far from my mind in every possible way right now, Sicheng. It’s fine.”

“Alright,” Sicheng said, and there was no more time to linger on the topic because the water shut off in the bathroom then, and moments later Xuxi waltzed into the room naked save for the towel wrapped around his waist.

“I’ll, uh, leave you two then,” Kun stuttered, relieved for an excuse to dash out of the room with a quick, “don’t mess up my sheets!” thrown over his shoulder in warning to his friends. He heard them speaking in low, playful tones before the bedroom door closed, and then Kun was alone in the living room.

Nighttime had fallen like a thick velvet blanket over the sky. He tread into the kitchen because that was always the place he felt the most comfortable, and found himself putting the kettle on and preparing a mug of chamomile tea. The movements were routine by now, and Kun could let his mind wander. Above him, the floorboards creaked with Xuxi’s and Sicheng’s movements, but he could tell they’d both gone to bed when the creaking stopped and the murmur of voices died away. He turned the flame off under the kettle just before it began to whistle, filled his mug to the brim with boiling water, and let the tea steep.

At Taeil and Johnny’s house, with Ten secure by his side, sleep had come easy to him, but now alone in his cabin in the woods, Kun felt uneasy and uncertain, his mind starting to race and return to what he’d seen and experienced over the past few days in the dead calm and quiet that pervaded, now.

Was Johnny awake yet? Had he recovered from the extraction he’d performed on Ten yesterday? Was Kun’s magic the same kind of magic as Johnny’s? As Donghyuck’s? The images had come so easily to Kun while they were scrying together, like he was folding back the pages of a book. Was that Donghyuck, or was that Kun?

And how many witches were out there in the world, anyway? The bookstore had been so easy to find with a couple of keywords in a Google search, and Donghyuck had been so open with him. Why, then, had Johnny not been as open with Kun from the very beginning? 

The questions swirled, endless and loud, in his head, until his temples began to throb. He cupped his hands around his mug of tea and wondered what Ten was doing in the house now, if he was asleep, if he was roaming the kitchen facing insomnia just like Kun was. His time with Ten felt truncated and incomplete, and he was already missing him like he'd miss a limb.

The tea had steeped. He removed the sachet and brought the mug to his nose, inhaling the earthy aroma deeply and letting the steam fill his lungs and cleanse him. What did chamomile smell like to Ten, whose heart was ruled by comforting scents? 

Kun stood at the kitchen counter, still and withdrawn as all around him the house creaked with the natural movements of the earth -- the wind flitting through the trees behind the cabin, the snow rustling across the forest floor and falling in sheets from tree branches and roofs. He sipped at the tea and uttered a tiny wish for himself, one that he did not think would come true but one that he had to release from the cage of his heart. 

He thought of golden eyes and warm skin, soft hair and the press of dry lips against his neck. The tea was soothing and hot, purifying as it went down his throat.

.

Kun dreamed he was in a car and someone else was driving. Two of his sisters were asleep, one snoring in the passenger seat and one in the seat beside him. In the rear-view mirror, he met eyes with the driver, his third sister, and darted his gaze down and away, guilty at being caught awake. Indeed, his third sister drilled her eyes into the mirror with such intent that Kun found himself looking up to meet her gaze.

“You should be resting,” the driver said. Trees whipped by the windows, black shapes against a blacker night. Above them, the moon was glowing and dripping with light.

Kun said in a voice that wasn’t his own, “How can I when I know what we’re going to do in four days?”

“We talked about this,” the driver said. “Go to sleep.”

His eyelids were suddenly too heavy for him to keep open. Though Kun struggled, he succumbed to their weight and fell into darkness. He was not sure how long he stayed there. When he felt something blunt and hard and about the size of a fist pushing into his stomach, his eyelids fluttered open again. The couch creaked when he rolled away slightly from the thing that had awoken him, his mind foggy with slumber.

The thing that had been digging into Kun’s stomach was Ten’s knee, connected to Ten’s body. Kun’s eyes registered the familiar shape of him curled up into a ball on his couch, but his mind couldn’t yet comprehend it. Was he still dreaming? Where had Ten come from? Was this real?

He reached out to weave his fingers through Ten’s thick hair, gasping when he found the lush locks soft under his fingertips. Ten himself made a small noise of appreciation, belatedly wrinkling his nose at the disturbance, and then his dark, golden irises were glowing in the dark, reminding Kun so much of the moon in his dream, of the moon he would see in the sky tonight if he looked out his window. 

“Kun?” His name was no more than a single exhalation of breath. Ten blinked slowly, coming to his senses, and Kun realized with a pang that Ten was wearing the shirt he had left him, the one that smelled like him. “What--?”

“Yeah, I’m here,” Kun said, just as quiet, pressing in close again when he sensed the confusion hovering behind Ten’s words, like a rubberband pulled taut and ready to snap. He felt Ten shift to accommodate his weight, his bulk, until they were latched together and sinking deeper into the cushions. Ten wormed his nose down past Kun’s jawline to his throat, where he tucked his head in so close under Kun’s chin that Kun winced at the pressure applied to the tender bruises there. Ten seemed to sense this and pulled back slightly, but Kun didn’t let him go far, his fingers still in his hair. He was so, so warm, his heat diffusing through Kun’s sore muscles and body and loosening the tension Kun had been holding inside of himself all day. “It’s okay, it’s okay. When did you get here? How?” Kun asked.

Ten’s feet squirmed against Kun’s shins under the soft, slightly scratchy throw blanket that covered them. “I...I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?” Kun's heart began to ping faster in his chest to match the alarm bells ringing in his head at the admission. How could Ten not know? Maybe he’d been sleepwalking, but Taeil and Johnny’s house was quite far to navigate in a state of unconsciousness on foot, with many obstacles between them. Maybe he’d shifted and run along the trail that connected their houses. Neither seemed likely. 

“I just...I woke up and...I’m here...” Ten’s breath hitched, his back heaving under Kun’s palm. His eyes darted from Kun’s face to the corners of the living room, searching and searching. “How did I get here? I don’t know--” He clung to Kun tighter as his breath quickened with his increasing panic. “What if I--”

They were mirroring each other in their confusion and uncertainty. The thought came to Kun distantly, as though someone else had spoken the words into his brain. Kun needed them both to calm. Kun drew Ten’s face into his hands and guided him to look at him, feeling his fear without understanding the details behind it, his heart beating just as quickly as Ten’s breaths. He forced himself to be calm and still, to tether himself to reality even though it seemed to be shifting underneath his feet with ever growing frequency. Ten needed him. “ _ Shh. _ It’s just me, Ten. Has something like this happened before?”

Ten wrapped his fingers around Kun’s wrists, his golden eyes flashing, and choked back a whimper, breathing through his teeth. “The hunters,” he grunted. “I don’t remember much there, either.”

It was not something Ten liked to think about. He let out a high pitched whine when his breaths spiked suddenly, the whites of his eyes showing his terror and his body growing rigid against the couch.

Kun was scared, his eyes burning. He had never seen Ten like this -- his brave and curious shapeshifter, hyperventilating on the couch and out of sync with his own body -- and he didn’t know what he could do to help other than to hold him and to help him slow his breaths. “You’re with me,” Kun kept murmuring, hoping to infuse his forced calm into Ten’s body that way Ten’s warmth had seeped into his own. “You’re safe here, you’re with me.”

They remained like this for a while, staring at each other, Ten's breath whistling through his throat much too quickly and Ten's grip crushing Kun's wrists as Kun tried not to cry. Kun didn’t even dare to blink. He brushed his thumbs back and forth over the soft curves of Ten’s cheeks in time with his own slow breaths to encourage Ten to breathe with him. Forever had passed by the time Ten's breathing slowed and returned to normal, and when Ten let go and wrapped his arms around Kun’s waist again, they both slumped toward each other, exhausted.

“I’m really here,” Ten whispered, more to himself than to Kun, as though the words were convincing enough proof.

“You’re really here, Ten.”

Ten took Kun’s arm and placed it around his middle, and then he bumped his forehead against Kun’s lips. “You touching me like this makes it real. Makes  _ me  _ real.”

“You’re real, Ten,” Kun gasped, his heart aching. What had been done to him? “With or without me.”

“I don’t want to be real without you,” Ten mumbled. “Maybe you’re the one who brought me here.”

Kun was not sure what Ten meant by what he said. His dream fizzled at the edges of his consciousness, his wild magic in his fingertips. Here, in the middle of the night with Ten wrapped around him and the moon nearly full, he thought maybe the blood still pounding in his ears and the heavy thump of his heart in his chest were his connection to the rhythm of the universe. He was not sure if he’d be able to go back to sleep. 

Ten was warm and completely dry, with no trace of snow or cold on his body, and when Kun craned his neck to glance around the living room, there was no evidence of him coming in through the front or back door. It was like Ten had materialized in front of him, like he had been summoned.

.


	2. Chapter 2

Kun decided he would make good on his promise of steak for breakfast, and he awoke early with the sun after waking up at the top of every hour throughout the night anyway, quickly changing into the casual mock neck sweater he’d taken from his room the night before, in order to get started cooking a hearty meal for four. 

There were flanks still wrapped in butcher's paper in his fridge. He couldn't quite believe he'd only gone to the market a couple of days ago for fresh produce; it felt like weeks had passed since he'd brought lunch over to Johnny's to slake his curiosity about the visions he'd seen during his scrying with Donghyuck. 

_Scrying._ Whenever he learned something new, he turned the unfamiliar words over in his mind with fragile wonder, like he was handling a particularly delicate globe of spun sugar in his hands. Three days ago he'd never even heard of scrying.

The flank steak was cold and smooth in his hand when he plopped it onto the wooden cutting board. He felt along the grain of the meat, satisfied that it was yielding and tender, and dove into his work.

The breakfast he wanted to prepare came easily together in his mind: steak and eggs were a given. As he skimmed the content of his pantry and refrigerator, he added more to the meal. He dug out three potatoes from the bottom of his pantry and peeled and chopped them quickly, adding onions and bell peppers to the mix. On a large flat griddle pan, he fried up the mixture. While that cooked, he seasoned the steak with a generous sprinkling of salt and crushed black pepper and let it sizzle away in another pan in a blend of butter and olive oil. Searching for a way to infuse more flavor into the meat, he crushed a couple of garlic cloves and pinched a couple of sprigs of rosemary between his fingers and threw these into the pan as well, and soon their strong aromas filled up the kitchen.

Kun inhaled and hummed a little tune under his breath, enjoying himself as he stirred the potato mixture around on the griddle and flipped the steak over with a pair of tongs to brown on the other side. He leaned back from the stove to peer into the living room, where Ten was still sprawled on the couch with his eyes closed and his mouth open, one bare leg stuck out from under the throw blanket. A smile inched across his face as he let his mind wander. 

The moment he’d woken up, he’d been worried that everything last night had been a dream, but Ten was still here on the couch with him in the morning, snoring lightly and glued to his hip. So that had been real. 

All of it had been real. 

Which meant that whatever had happened to Ten had been real, too. Two weeks with the hunters, and Ten said he barely remembered any of it, though the fear and anxiety that remained in his eyes and in his body were clear signals to Kun that he’d been hurt, and hurt badly. Was the worst of it the silver in his blood? What else had they done to him? And how could Kun help him heal? 

A dull pain flooded his chest when he thought about what Ten had gone through, alone, and after Kun had told him he didn’t believe in magic, too. He owed it to Ten to try to understand his world, their world. He wanted to know it all -- who else was out there, what they could do, what they could be. He wanted to know what _he_ could do, with his so-called magic. Could he build wards like Johnny? Could he scry on his own, like Donghyuck?

What if Ten really had appeared last night beside him out of nowhere just because Kun wanted it to be so? Surely magic couldn’t be that easy without consequence. Kun had wanted things before, too, and they hadn’t come to pass -- he’d wanted to finish his business degree before he changed his mind; he’d wanted his first job in a real kitchen to be an opportunity for tutelage under the head chef but found himself peeling potatoes all day instead. So what was different, now?

On the griddle, the oil popped and spattered, making Kun jump back from the stove and breaking him from his thoughts. He stirred the vegetables around some more before sliding them off the hot iron surface and onto a large plate for serving, leaving this on the counter. The steak was nearly done, too.

The floorboards creaked upstairs. Undoubtedly, Xuxi was already rushing Sicheng to join him downstairs because he could smell what Kun was cooking. 

Kun paused, thinking. What could he say to his friends about Ten? That he'd called and asked him to come over really early this morning was the easiest, most straightforward lie he could conjure in the moment. He just hoped that neither of them would be so observant as to notice Ten hadn't brought anything with him, including shoes.

He hated lying. He hated lying so much, and he could foresee that he’d be doing a lot more of it in the future in order to keep his friends safe in the dark. If he’d had a choice in the matter, he would have told Xuxi and Sicheng about everything and made them believe it, too, but he didn’t want to take his chances with Taeil, not until he knew more about him and what he wanted or cared about.

So he had to pretend like everything was normal and fine.

Xuxi came bounding down the stairs without Sicheng, apparently too impatient to wait for his boyfriend, and Kun heard him stop with a thud just before reaching the bottom. Kun's shoulders tensed, but Xuxi came around the doorway a moment later with a wide grin on his bespectacled face, his mop of hair tied up in a messy half-knot. "We seem to have company," Xuxi announced.

"Yeah," Kun said with a forced air of disinterest. "That would be you, Xuxi. You're company."

"I mean the hot little number on your couch, Kun!" Xuxi said, a little too loud for Kun's tastes.

"Xuxi," Kun hissed, pointing his tongs at him as he approached. "Shut up, he's sleeping!"

"I can see that," Xuxi teased. He strolled over to the oven and plucked a single potato from the plate, popping it into his mouth and moaning with delight. "That's so good."

"It's a potato -- anyone can fry potatoes."

"I can't, not like you anyway," Xuxi said. "Yours are like...little pillows of joy." He crossed his arms and leaned against the stove. "Anything I can help with?"

"Yeah, actually," Kun said. "Can you do the eggs? I think we'll just scramble them."

Xuxi nodded and went where Kun directed him. Despite his massive hands, Xuxi could be surprisingly gentle when handling things, and not a single piece of eggshell fell into the bowl where he was cracking them open. "So when did he get here? I didn't hear anything last night."

"He, uh, we were very quiet," Kun explained. He hoped Xuxi didn’t notice how his ears were burning as he lied through his teeth. "He called to check in earlier this morning and I just asked him to come over. We didn't do anything -- just slept."

"Mmhm, sure." Though Xuxi could be surprisingly gentle, he could also be surprisingly fierce. He beat the eggs with a fork with such violence that Kun worried half of the yolks would end up all over the floor. The racket of the fork pinging off the sides of the bowl pierced Kun's eardrums in what had been a calm, quiet, and atmospheric morning.

"Calm down with that," he instructed him. "You're not trying to cook them with heat in there."

Xuxi paused and grinned at Kun sheepishly. "Right. Sorry. So does he come over often?” He padded over to the edge of the kitchen with the bowl, whisking slowly now and peeking at the man sleeping on Kun’s couch. 

“Just sometimes,” Kun hedged, turning off the flame under the sizzling slab of steak and using the tongs to start to transfer it to a cutting board. “We’ll, like, go to the market together in the mornings. He’s an early riser…” That was a blatant lie. Ten could sleep well into the afternoon and be as immovable as a stone the whole time, but Kun’s mouth kept running and Xuxi nodded along to it. Kun imagined that Xuxi was slowly piecing together the facts he’d learned about Ten in his head and building a totally different person out of them. But that Ten in Xuxi’s head would be real to him. 

“That’s cool man.” Xuxi came back and bumped Kun with his elbow in camaraderie. “That’s cool. Can’t wait to officially meet him.”

The steak dropped from the tongs to the cutting board prematurely, its juices splashing across the counter. “Whoops, slipped,” Kun mumbled, quickly dabbing at the small mess with a kitchen rag. It hadn’t occurred to him yet that now that Ten was here, he’d have to talk to his friends. Ten would have to pretend, too, and Kun wasn’t sure if Ten would be able to do that. The one time he thought he’d be able to see Ten play a completely normal human in front of his neighbors over dinner, he’d shifted into his wolf shape for the whole night. He scrambled for something he could say to prepare both Xuxi and Ten for their inevitable interaction. What he came up with was, “I can’t wait for you to meet him, too, but be gentle, Xuxi. He just went through something...pretty hard.”

Xuxi read between the lines Kun drew for him as he handed Kun the bowl of whisked eggs. “Ah, family stuff? Is that why he’s staying with Johnny now?”

“Yeah,” Kun mumbled, wondering just how deeply he could bury himself in lies before the weight of them crushed him. But he was lying to protect his friends _and_ Ten. At least, this was what he kept telling himself. He poured the eggs over the melted butter in the pan and stirred his fork through the mixture, looking for soft curdles.

“Got it,” Xuxi said. Kun wasn’t sure what exactly Xuxi got, but he trusted that Xuxi would now treat Ten carefully and with compassion, and not with his usual overly boisterous and physical affection. He loved Xuxi, but sometimes his friend’s presence could just be so _big_. “I should probably tell Sicheng and warn him not to be your personal policeman.”

“I mean, he should not be my personal policeman anyway. But I’d really appreciate that, Xuxi.”

“Yeah, I’ll be back.”

After helping to set up the kitchen table with what was ready -- the potatoes, the steak still resting on the cutting board, and place settings for four -- Xuxi headed back upstairs in search of his boyfriend while Kun fretted about the eggs growing too firm as they rested on the serving plate. He had just pressed the ‘brew’ button on the coffee maker when he felt a pair of eyes on him and turned toward the entrance of the kitchen.

“Who are those men upstairs?” Ten asked him in a voice barely above a whisper. He was wearing one of Kun’s flannels over his shirt and soft pants where the bottoms looked cut off so they wouldn’t drag under his feet. His hair looked like he’d been in a fight with a bear. Even though Ten was worrying his bottom lip between his teeth, his shoulders hunched as he held himself, Kun couldn’t help but laugh a little, still growing used to the idea that Ten was back. That Ten was here. That Ten was going to be okay because Kun was going to make sure that he was.

“My friends,” Kun said. “They’re just my friends. Remember? You saw Xuxi yesterday.” He washed his hands and hung up his apron, and when he spun around he was met with Ten’s nose in his chest and his arms thrown around his waist. “Woah, hi -- hey, hey. It’s okay. I promise, they’re just my friends.”

“I remember them,” Ten said, pulling back and standing upright when he’d received a satisfactory number of head pats and head scratches. “But they won’t remember me.”

“No, they won’t…They don’t know about you, or about anything else.” Kun paused in thought. He was starting to feel like he was trying to push a massive boulder uphill, and the terrain was just growing more and more slippery. Shame and guilt were making themselves comfortable in his stomach. “And I think, for now, we should keep it that way.” 

Ten’s bottom lip quivered as he sucked in a breath, but he ducked his eyes and nodded stiffly. “I understand.”

Kun wanted to talk to Ten more about last night, to have a chance to reassure him that everything was going to be okay, to tell him he wasn’t asking Ten to pretend because he was ashamed of him but because he wanted to keep everyone safe, but Xuxi came back down the stairs then, followed closely by Sicheng. Both of them rounded on Ten as soon as their feet hit the ground floor, and Kun placed a hand on the small of Ten’s back when he saw him bending his knees slightly as though to spring away. Ten froze in that half-crouch, and slowly straightened. 

“Ten, yeah?” Xuxi asked, extending his hand. “We didn’t get the chance to meet yesterday.”

Ten stared at the hand, then turned wide, startled eyes to Kun. 

_Shake_ , Kun mouthed. 

Ten stuck out his arm and shook Xuxi’s hand like he had no joints in that limb. “Hi,” he said.

“I’m Xuxi.”

“I’m Ten,” Ten said, and Kun was grateful Xuxi didn’t make a lame joke about them already knowing who Ten was.

“And I’m Sicheng.” Sicheng took over the handshake, bringing Ten in for a side-armed hug, which Ten also received robotically. Kun didn’t miss the way Ten’s nose dipped to Sicheng’s neck for a surreptitious sniff before they broke apart. “It’s nice to meet you. Xuxi told me you were already here. Do you always start your days this early? I need to learn your secrets.”

“Um,” Ten said, gaze jumping between Sicheng and Xuxi. “I don’t have any secrets. I missed Kun.”

Wonderful. Ten was doing this lying thing splendidly. Kun cleared his throat in the beat of confused, slightly awkward silence that followed, and curled his arm to bring Ten closer to his hip. “Haha, should we eat?” he suggested. 

Breakfast was not the disaster Kun thought it was going to be. Ten did reach for the steak Kun had sliced on the cutting board with his hands once, but a silent, strict glance from Kun paired with a fervent shake of his head had Ten retracting his fingers. Ten watched the others eat and mimicked them, and Kun felt a little knot of stress loosen in his spine. Then Xuxi asked, his mouth half full, “So, Ten. What do you do?”

“Do?” Ten echoed, tilting his head in question.

“Yeah, what do you do for work?”

The knot of stress expanded to Kun’s chest. What could Ten possibly say to that? Kun’s knife grated against the plate as he cut into his steak with white knuckles. He was about to open his mouth to explain that Ten was taking a break from work when Ten sat up a little straighter and said, “Photography.”

Kun nearly dropped his silverware in surprise. Xuxi beamed at him, while Sicheng’s eyes lit up with interest. 

“Photography? What kind?” Sicheng asked.

“The kind with a camera,” Ten said. Xuxi and Sicheng laughed at the joke, though Kun could tell Ten wasn’t joking. He looked bewildered for a moment but schooled it under a slightly curious expression. “Is there another kind?”

Xuxi pointed his fork at him. “That’s funny, man. So you’re an artist. Would love to see your work, maybe? What do you normally shoot?”

“Shoot?” Ten’s eyes narrowed, and Kun, his heart pounding once again in his ears, laid his hand over his wrist on the table before Ten could misunderstand.

“Ten shoots a lot of wildlife,” Kun lied through his teeth, passing a soft grin over to Ten. “But he’s shy about his work.”

“Yes,” Ten said. “I’m shy.”

“I get it, I get it.” Xuxi shoveled more eggs into his mouth. “Sicheng never shows me his dances until they’re totally complete. Like, I can’t even get a sneak peek!”

“I’m shy, Xuxi,” Sicheng teased.

“And what,” Ten began haltingly, looking briefly at Kun for encouragement, “what do you both do?”

Sicheng talked about his dance background and his work for the company, and Xuxi shared his five-year plan to expand his veterinary practice. The next twelve minutes were dedicated solely to stories Xuxi could offer Ten about the animals he had saved. Ten was particularly interested in the dogs who were very well-behaved through their check ups. The conversation was easy to steer after that, with Ten nodding along to Sicheng’s and Xuxi’s stories and Kun prompting his friends to share more and more about themselves. “Tell him about that time we took Sicheng fishing for the first time,” he said, and, “What’s that restaurant we used to go to all the time in college again?”

There was a slight kerfuffle over the last strip of steak when Xuxi and Ten both reached for it, but Xuxi easily let it go when Ten made a noise like a puppy’s whine. “Oh, my god, does he do that to you?” Xuxi asked Kun in a stage whisper. “How do you say ‘no’ to him?”

“Firmly, and with conviction,” Kun said. Ten ate the last piece of steak with gusto.

Now that Sicheng and Xuxi knew Kun wasn’t a human popsicle somewhere out in the woods, Sicheng wanted to get back home in time to run some errands and check in with the company, as he was running a seminar the next morning. They said their goodbyes shortly after breakfast, after Kun loaded them with leftovers from his fridge that would last the couple through the week.

As Xuxi was climbing into the driver’s side of his car, he waved at Kun and Ten at the door, thanking Kun again for the meals, and begging him not to be a stranger and only calling when his mind was melting. “Maybe lay off the mushrooms?” Xuxi suggested, and those were to be the words he’d leave Kun with. Kun could see Xuxi and Sicheng laughing with each other through the windshield. With a final wave from them both, they turned around in the driveway and drove off.

“What were they saying in the car?” Kun asked Ten when Xuxi’s car turned at the end of the driveway and out of view. 

“They were saying they’re glad you have company,” Ten said. “They were saying they liked me.”

“Good.” Kun nodded and closed the door. Ten stood an arm’s length away from him, still draped in Kun’s flannel, hands hidden in the sleeves and carefully not looking at him. “You were great, Ten. I think they believed you were--”

“Normal?” Ten said. “Human?”

“What? No, that’s not…” But Kun didn’t know what he could say. Ten had taken the words right out of his mouth. 

Here it was again, the divide between worlds Kun was trying to reconcile. He felt like he was straddling two horses at the same time and they were both going in different directions. He didn’t want Ten to give up his wildness, his wolf-skin, just to fit into Kun’s world. And Kun didn’t want to give up Ten and what he’d learned from him and because of him, just so that he could go on as normal, pretending magic didn’t exist. That would be like holding your hand over a fire and pretending it didn’t burn. 

But he needed time to figure out how it all fit together, and there seemed to be none of that. 

“I think I should go back to Taeil’s,” Ten whispered in a wavering voice, already turning away from Kun.

“Hey, no. Don’t go yet,” Kun said. He followed as Ten began to walk toward the back door, and he could tell from Ten’s gait that he intended to shift. His heart began to race. He couldn’t let Ten leave like this -- hurt again by Kun’s thoughtless words. What if he disappeared again for two weeks, or longer? What if something worse caught up to him in the woods? “Don’t go, we should talk,” he called after Ten, who had started to jog, then run to the door. “Don’t!” Kun shouted just as Ten’s hand curved around the knob, throwing all of his intention behind his words. “Don’t leave! _Come back!_ ” 

Ten’s hand froze. The air pressure swooped so suddenly that Kun's ears popped, and then Ten staggered forward as though being crushed under an impossible weight. “Kun!” Ten’s cry was full of surprise and anguish. Kun rushed forward, not understanding, against a wall of wind that came from nowhere. He struggled, feeling as though he were hurtling himself headfirst into a hurricane, and Ten crashed onto his knees with a pained yelp. “Kun, stop!” Ten begged.

“I’m not -- I don’t know what’s--” Kun broke through the wall of wind and reached him. He jerked Ten back by the shoulders, and they landed in a mess of limbs together on the floor. Ten rolled away from him with a growl, his eyes flashing. “What was that?” Kun asked breathlessly.

Ten swiped the hair out of his face, fear and anger quickly morphing into panic. “That was _you_!” Ten snarled.

“I don’t -- I don’t understand--”

“Let me out!” Ten lunged for the door again.

“No--!” Kun threw out his hand in desperation and watched in horror as Ten was hurtled back from the door like he’d been shot from a canon. He tumbled, head over heels, across the floor until he collided with a wounded whimper and hollow thud into the back of the couch. He didn’t move.

Kun’s hands were shaking but his heart and lungs had stopped in his chest. His ears rang with white noise as he stared at Ten’s crumpled form. He’d done that? He couldn’t have done that. He had only wanted Ten to stay. Talk. Rest. He looked between Ten’s body and the door, over and over again, not understanding. He couldn’t have done that.

Tears jumped into his eyes. The paralyzing shock of what just happened lifted from him like a sheet in the wind. He needed to check on Ten. When he raced toward the shapeshifter on his hands and knees, the pressure dissipated suddenly, and the ringing in his ears stopped. “Oh my god.” Kun’s voice felt as though it were being squeezed out of him. His hands hovered over Ten, unsure if he could touch but desperately wanting to take him into his arms. Uncontrollable tremors still wracked his fingers. “Oh my god, oh my god. Ten? Ten? Oh my god--”

Ten groaned as he pushed himself up gingerly with his hands, and Kun held his breath the whole time. He wouldn’t look at Kun.

“Ten--” Kun leaned forward but immediately froze when Ten flinched back violently, knocking himself against the couch again.

“No, don’t--!”

The bottom fell out of Kun’s stomach. His chin wobbled as tears burned through his eyes. “I won’t hurt you.”

Ten had curled himself up into a tiny ball, his face pressed into his knees and his hands smashed against his ears. “Please let me go,” he sobbed quietly. “Please let me go, please let me go, please…”

“Ten…” Kun sat back on his heels, devastation crawling slowly through his bloodstream like ice in his veins. He looked down at his hands and clenched them into fists as hard as he could, so that they would stop shaking, even though his heart was still pounding so quickly he thought it could burst. He felt like his soul was screaming. “Ten, I’m so sorry,” he cried. “I’m sorry, Ten. I don’t know what happened. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you. Look at me, please?”

Ten had always been comforted by touch, but now he had rejected it. Kun wouldn’t try to touch him again until Ten came to him. He sat there with tears streaming down his cheeks until his hands went numb, as Ten’s pleads faded into stifled cries, into silence, and only after a long while did Ten look up at him, blinking the fog from his eyes swollen from crying, the tip of his nose red and wet. 

“I’m sorry, Ten,” Kun said again. A sob that rose like a tidal wave inside of him wracked his frame and bent him in half over himself, and he hugged his own sides tightly as though he was trying to keep his guts from spilling out all over the floor. “What’s happening to me? What’s happening to me?”

The floor was cold and impersonal against his forehead as he released the pain and confusion he’d endured onto it -- his abject loneliness without Ten, what he’d seen in the crystal bowl, Taeil’s sharp teeth and snarl, dodging arrows and hunters and magic and now this, this power he hadn’t asked for and didn’t know anything about, not why it was his or where it had come from or how to control it. And he had hurt Ten with it.

He felt careful fingers working their way through his hair, cradling the back of his skull and instinctively seized up. Then he felt a nose against his ear, and lips against his temple. He shuddered through an inhale and turned his head to the side, laying his cheek flat against the floor. Ten was mirroring him, laying on his side with his knees tucked near his belly, his hand over the back of Kun’s neck. “You’re scared,” Ten whispered. “Your heart is beating so fast.”

“Yeah,” Kun sniffed. “I’m really fucking scared, Ten.”

Ten didn’t say anything for a long time, but he kept his hand over Kun’s neck and scratched his fingers through the short hairs at the base of Kun’s skull. Through staring, Kun noticed the flecks of dark amber in the kaleidoscope of Ten’s eyes. Kun focused on the light pressure of Ten’s nails, the smell of him like cedar and pine, like freshly turned dirt. Ten pushed himself closer to Kun until their noses were touching, and then their foreheads, and Kun could feel Ten’s breath breaking over his top lip. 

“Don't be scared,” Ten whispered. “It was an accident. I thought you were someone else for a moment, but I know you. I know you. We'll figure it out.”

A fresh, urgent wave of emotion clogged Kun’s throat. He wept openly. “How can you know me? I don’t know myself right now. What if I’m dangerous? What if I hurt you -- again?”

“I heal fast,” Ten quipped. His lip curled up on one side in a tired, lopsided grin. “Just don’t cut my head off. I don’t think I can heal from that.”

Kun groaned and managed to tuck his face into Ten’s neck, chest still heaving. It was strange that Ten was the one to comfort him now, even though Kun was the one who hurt him, but he was grateful for it. He felt Ten readjust by looping an arm over Kun’s waist, tilting his head up so that there was more space for Kun to dig into him. He wanted to wrap himself inside Ten’s body and thought that he now understood why Ten wanted to be held like this so often; it created a connection so raw that Kun could feel his heart adjusting to match the rhythm of Ten’s. “Don’t joke like that,” Kun pleaded. 

“Okay,” Ten said. “Sorry.”

“What I mean is, I don’t like thinking of you getting hurt because of me. Not again. Not ever.”

Ten was quiet again, but that was okay because Kun could feel his pulse thumping against his cheek, and he was content to drift. He wondered how far Xuxi and Sicheng had gotten from the cabin in their car by now. It felt like hours had passed since they left, but the sun was still out, so it was probably still early in the afternoon. Ten was firm and warm against him, soft in the belly and arms. He loved that about him. 

“We should probably get off the floor,” Ten said eventually. Kun’s limbs were stiff from the cold and from disuse, and his knee twinged when he stood, but Ten steadied him through it and took Kun’s hands into his own when they were upright. He sighed as he brought Kun’s hands to his lips and kissed his knuckles, his wrists. “Let’s sit,” Ten suggested.

Kun nodded. They walked around the couch and sat closely together on the cushions, their thighs touching. Ten looked to be on the verge of speaking, his eyes intent and his lips pressed in a tight line that Kun now associated with Ten being deep in thought, so he sat still and waited for the words to come. They were still holding hands like they were a tether for each other. A grounding. Kun imagined that if lightning struck them both right now, they would illuminate beautifully, dazzling each other with brightness, and not be harmed at all.

“I don’t want you to get hurt, either,” Ten said. “You need to learn how to use what you have.”

“A guide, yes,” Kun said, suddenly remembering Donghyuck’s words in the bookstore. “That’s what I need. But who?”

Ten grumbled something that Kun couldn’t quite catch, so Kun squeezed his hands, asking him to speak up.

“The only person I trust for you,” Ten said reluctantly, “is Johnny.”

“Johnny,” Kun repeated. “Of course.”

“But they might need time,” Ten added. “To accept you.”

“What do you mean?”

This time Ten squeezed Kun’s hands. “You are not like anyone else. That scares them.”

Kun let out a noise of disbelief between his lips. “Even Taeil? _I_ scare _Taeil_?” For the moment, Kun could not imagine a more terrifying being than the sharp-toothed creature that was Taeil. When he swallowed he could still feel his hand around his neck. 

“Maybe not scared…” Ten trailed off, looking to the side in thought. He had started to twine his body around Kun’s on the couch like an affectionate boa constrictor, and now his head was on Kun’s shoulder. “What’s the word? Wary. Of you. Your power.”

Kun sagged back into the couch with an agitated sigh, taking Ten with him. “So I’m dangerous.”

“Not dangerous,” Ten said. He pushed himself up higher so that his chin could rest in the divot of Kun’s shoulder and hugged Kun around the middle. A pleasant tingle raced down Kun’s spine when Ten dragged the tip of his nose across Kun’s pulse, inhaling his scent. “Not dangerous. New. Different. Remember when? Remember when I told you that you smell like twilight?”

“Yeah. I still don’t know what it means.”

“It’s hard to describe. You know how stars are born?”

Kun tucked his chin in order to shoot Ten a bewildered look. “Do _you_?”

“Johnny taught me once. I used to know it more but -- There are all these materials and stuff, all coming together at the right place and right time. And then there’s a big reaction. And then there’s light,” Ten said. “That’s you. You’re the star. You burn so bright.”

Ten seemed pleased with his simplified explanation of the birth of a star, a shy grin on his face, and Kun could not help but reach up to scratch his fingers against Ten’s scalp at the base of his skull. His heart skipped a beat when Ten went lax and cross-eyed at the gentle treatment. None of what was happening to him made sense, but maybe it really would be okay, as long as Ten were here with him. “And what does that make you?” he asked fondly.

“Me?” Ten’s voice reminded Kun of syrup, thick and sweet and slow. “You pulled me in with your gravity, Kun. I’m yours.”

“Is that what it felt like, when I got here? Gravity?” Kun asked. Heat flared across his cheeks.

Ten nodded slowly, his body melting into Kun’s. “Sorta. Kinda. Like there was smoke in the air. I had to follow it. Johnny and Taeil felt it, too, but Taeil wanted…” Ten drifted and shifted so that he could fit himself into the space under Kun’s arm, like Kun was a fire he wanted to warm his body beside. 

Ten’s breathing deepened, and Kun felt his own eyelids growing heavy. He pillowed his cheek on top of Ten’s head. “What did Taeil want?” Kun murmured.

“To get rid of you,” Ten slurred.

Kun wasn’t even surprised, but Kun’s association of Taeil with terror was so strong that it still made his heart kick around in his chest. Of course Taeil had wanted to get rid of him; he probably still did. Kun thought Ten was kind not to say the words _he wanted to kill_ you outloud. 

“But I got to you first,” Ten continued, sounding like he was on the edge of dreaming. He fit his hand over Kun’s drumming heart to calm it. “So you’re mine to protect, now.”

.


	3. Chapter 3

Ten did not go back to Johnny and Taeil’s that afternoon. Instead, Kun brought him into the kitchen, and they whiled away the hours preparing their next meal as the sun slowly set behind the trees of the woods surrounding them. He craved ribs and  _ mantou _ and flash-fried vegetables, and he set about this menu with the efficiency of a general ordering and maneuvering a cadron of troops in the military. Could Ten fetch this ingredient, and that? Could he wash the vegetables, measure the ingredients for the  _ mantou  _ \-- the steamed buns?

Ten, as ever, was a helpful assistant in the kitchen, rushing to do as Kun asked and throwing out questions along the way. What was active yeast? What was it used for? Was  _ shaoxing  _ wine something humans could drink? He’d never seen that kind of wine before, and Johnny loved wine. Kun answered them all, happy to keep his hands and his mind busy, happy that Ten was so too occupied. With their combined efforts, the dishes began to take shape.

The pork ribs braising in an aromatic  _ shaoxing  _ wine mixture on the stove smelled heavenly and brought Kun back to his family’s small home outside Vancouver, into the kitchen where his mother and grandmother had him sit at the table as a child with them to fold dumplings until his hands were caked and stiff with flour, where his father would chop through pork and chicken bones with a giant cleaver, the silver blade thunking with a dull thud into the cutting board. 

Maybe there was magic in the act of sitting through a whole afternoon picking the green curly-cue, wiry ends from snow pea tips before they could be stir-fried. His grandmother's soups always did make him feel better when he was sick, and her fingers were always warm and smelled of freshly cooked rice. No matter what had happened during the day, she summoned the family together every evening for dinner, and everyone always showed -- Kun, his mother, his father, his aunt and uncle on his mother's side, and his cousin Chenle. He remembered mealtimes as a silent ritual to show appreciation for the food that had been prepared, and he was not allowed to leave the table until he had finished every last grain of rice in his bowl.

He missed those rituals. Thinking of his family brought an ache to his chest. He hadn’t seen them in a while, and now when he did, things would be different. Maybe not for them, but for him. He knew that the secrets he held would change him, but what he didn’t yet know was whether the change would be for the better. 

Next, Kun prepared the dough for the  _ mantou _ and divided the batch into two equal parts, so that they could each knead and work the dough into a smooth, even texture at the counter with their hands. All this nostalgia was making Kun curious about Ten’s past. Did he even remember his family? Were they still around? He eased his hands into his ball of dough and asked with the same apprehension as taking that first step into unknown, cold waters, “Did you like cooking with your family, Ten? You’re so helpful in the kitchen.”

Ten slapped his palm into the dough before him. He was not as gentle as Kun was with it, but his method was probably going to yield faster results. “Taeil cooks sometimes,” Ten said, “even though he doesn’t eat like we do, so sometimes I help him.”

“I meant, um, before Taeil?”

Ten dug his knuckles into the dough and blinked up at Kun in confusion. “Before Taeil? Before Taeil and Johnny...I had a sister. A mother. A father. But they aren’t my family anymore.”

“What happened?”

“I became a monster,” Ten said in a slightly detached tone. “We were spending the summer in London. One day I woke up in a hospital and couldn’t remember anything from the whole week before. My family had gone back home, but my sister had left a note.  _ Don’t come home _ , it said.  _ They think you are a demon. They will have you killed _ . Taeil was there instead. He said I could stay with him.”

Kun had stopped kneading his dough, a lump forming in his throat at the knowledge that Ten had been abandoned, discarded by the people who were supposed to love him. “How old were you?”

Ten hummed. “I don’t know. Sixteen?”

“I had no idea,” Kun said, feeling miserable and guilty for having brought it up. When Kun was sixteen he’d been piling on the extracurriculars to pad his applications to get into a good college with a scholarship. “I’m so sorry, Ten.”

Ten shook his head, a sad smile playing on his lips as his fingers stilled around his perfectly formed ball of dough. “Don’t be. I haven’t thought about them in a long time. They were right to be scared of me.”

“But you’re -- you’re not dangerous!” The words burst from Kun’s lips like birds being released from too small of a cage. He had to make Ten understand. Ten wasn't dangerous at all; it was Kun who couldn't control what he had. “You’re kind. You’re thoughtful. You don’t go on rampages while howling at the moon. You’re not a demon. They shouldn’t have left you like that. They should have given you a chance.”

“They had,” Ten said, tense. His shoulders edged toward his ears. “But it wasn’t enough. Back then, I was so new, and so angry at what had happened to me. I  _ was  _ dangerous. Taeil helped me get past it. He even made me finish high school -- late, but I finished. Anyway, it's over with. I have a new family, now.”

Ten began working the dough again, and Kun didn't have the heart to tell him to stop just yet. Ten's dough had already reached the perfect smooth and buoyant texture.

“Then I suppose I’m glad Taeil found you,” Kun sighed. "Thank you for telling me about them..." He sensed that the callous disregard Ten had for his family abandoning him was his own way of protecting himself. Emotional distance meant apathy, and apathy was the opposite of love. He changed the subject. “Can I ask you something? Is he a vampire?”

“Oh, yes." Ten's eyes glittered as he smiled up at Kun. "And very old.”

Kun nodded, secretly pleased he was right about Taeil and grateful that Ten's shoulders relaxed as soon as he switched topics. “I thought so. How old?”

"You know, he's never told me exactly. And he says it's rude to ask."

Kun chuckled at that. The way Ten talked about Taeil and their history made Kun think that Taeil couldn't be all that bad. It was apparent now that he cared for Ten, anyway, and that mattered a lot to Kun. He could just imagine Ten pestering Taeil to reveal his age and Taeil swatting him away like an annoying fly buzzing around his head.

Kun finished kneading his section of the dough and patted it into a smooth ball that fit into his cupped hands. He sprinkled a bit more flour over it, and set it on the counter to rest. "Yours is done, too," he said to Ten. "See how it looks uniform all over? No lumps or anything left. We’ll let it rest for a little bit before we shape it."

Ten grinned and followed what Kun had done exactly as Kun washed his hands and went to check on the pork on the stove.

“What’s next?” The shapeshifter stepped up to Kun's elbow and lowered his face so closely to the pot where steam was rising that Kun instinctively cupped his shoulder and pulled him back by his shirt.

“You’ll burn yourself,” he scolded him.

“No, I won’t.”

“Then maybe I don’t want your drool falling into the pot.” He laughed so that Ten would know he was joking, and Ten tittered along with him, and then suddenly the flat of Ten’s tongue was pressed against Kun’s cheek, swiping up toward his temple. Kun felt all higher thinking and functioning screech to a halt in his brain as Ten withdrew with a gasp, landing heavily on his heels with his hands on Kun’s shoulders. His face was flaming.

“Sorry, I--”

“Did you just lick my cheek?”

“Yes,” Ten said meekly.

“Wha-- Why?”

Ten’s hands, still dusted in flour, flew up to shield his face from view. “It just came over me!” he cried, his words growing more and more muffled as he pressed his hands against his cheeks. “I felt close to you. I don’t know.”

“Hey, stop that.” Laughter bubbled from Kun’s lips, and he wrapped his hands gently around Ten’s wrists. It wasn’t like Ten had slobbered all over him, so Kun wasn’t grossed out in the slightest. Ten’s surprise and embarrassment with himself was enough for Kun to find the action harmless, and maybe even a bit sweet. So Ten’s displays of affection weren’t exactly normal -- so what? Kun could grow used to them. “You’re getting flour all over yourself.”

“Huh?”

“It’s everywhere--”

As soon as Kun managed to pull Ten’s hands away from his face, his heart did a swan dive straight to his feet. Flour was streaked across Ten’s pink cheeks and over the bridge of his nose, and Ten’s eyes were wide with confusion. Kun licked the pad of his thumb and ran it over a smudge of flour and felt his chest expand with warmth when Ten sucked in a breath, his eyelids fluttering shut. He whimpered softly when Kun created a cradle in his palm for Ten to rest his cheek. Ten was unlike anyone Kun had ever known, and holding him like this was like Kun had managed to cup moonlight into his bare hands. 

He wanted to tease him. Kun leaned forward with a playful giggle and swiped his tongue in a tiny kitten lick over Ten’s cheek. “That’s a little better.”

Ten’s eyes shot open blazing with fire. “Kun…”

Desire pulsed in the pit of Kun’s stomach as the air grew thick with tension between them. He wanted so badly to kiss him, to touch him more, and deeper, but the memory of Ten flinching away from him earlier kept him at bay. Maybe little kitten licks were fine, but how would Ten react to Kun kissing him on the mouth, to Kun pushing him against the counter and wedging his thigh between Ten’s legs? Because that was what Kun wanted, but he also didn’t want to risk doing anything that would push Ten's boundaries about which he was still learning. He retreated. “Actually,” he said with a rasp, “go wash it off, please. When you come back, you can help me finish the buns.”

Ten’s shoulders stiffened -- In disappointment? In relief? Kun couldn’t tell, as his eyes shuttered as though a shadow had passed behind them. “Fine,” Ten said. “But don’t start eating the ribs without me…”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, Ten.”

Ten left slowly, like he was waiting for Kun to call him back with each step, but Kun was well-practiced in the art of self-restraint.

.

Time passed differently for Kun that evening, after dinner and everything that had happened before it. It seemed as though he’d blinked and Ten was tracing his fingers over the contours of Kun’s face and over his collarbones underneath the neck of his sweater, rousing him as the radiator clacked on in the background. Kun’s head was in Ten’s lap and they were on the couch. The credits were playing on the television of a movie they’d both half-watched. Kun remembered trying to focus on the movie and giving up within minutes of the opening scene because his brain had felt like a jar full of rattling marbles. His belly was full and he was warm, and despite knowing he’d dozed through most of the movie, once he saw that it was dark outside of the windows he yawned hugely, and Ten did the same.

“Do you want to go to bed?” Ten asked. 

“Yeah, let’s,” Kun mumbled. He rose and pulled at Ten’s hands so that he would come with him, and together they clambered up the stairs toward Kun’s bedroom, where Kun took over the bathroom first to wash his face and brush his teeth. The thought of climbing into the shower now drained him even more of energy; he’d bathe in the morning. When he came out of the bathroom, Ten was sitting on the edge of the bed, his body tensed as though he were ready to bolt at the snap of a finger. 

Kun worried that Ten was scared of him, after all. They hadn’t talked about what happened earlier this afternoon since then, but sometimes when Kun blinked he saw Ten’s crumpled form beside the couch behind his eyelids, and his gut churned with horror and guilt.

“Are you alright?” Kun asked.

Ten blinked up at him, his eyes vacant and far away. Lost. He looked at Kun without seeing him. “Sorry, I…”

“It’s okay.” Kun hesitated on his feet. He didn’t want Ten flinching away from him again if he reached for him without him knowing, or without his consent. “I just want to make sure you’re okay.”

“I’m alright,” Ten said with a wan smile.

“I’m sorry about before,” Kun said, fidgeting with his hands. “I want to do what you said. Talk to Johnny. Learn how to control it. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

“I know. I know that. I believe you.” Ten sat with his shoulders hunched toward his ears. He looked so small in Kun’s clothes, wearing them like he wanted to burrow inside of them. “Maybe I should--”

“You want to brush your teeth?” Kun asked, gesturing toward the en suite.

Ten swallowed, his throat bobbing. “Am I sleeping here tonight?”

“Yeah,” Kun said. “That is, unless you don’t...”

“Oh, right. It’s just that -- you’ve never -- it wasn’t allowed before. Because I’d get dirt in your bed.”

The mattress groaned as Kun slid into a seat next to Ten slowly. How silly of him, before. “Well, now I don’t care about that,” Kun said. “And I missed you. And I want you here, if that’s what you want, too.”

Ten nodded empathically. “Yes. That’s what I want.”

Kun laughed, tweaking the end of Ten’s nose with his thumb affectionately. Ten wanted to stay. Ten wasn’t scared of him. “Alright, then. But you have to brush your teeth.”

He did after some nagging, and then the next battle was changing into pajamas. Kun insisted that if Ten were not going to wear a shirt that he at least should change into a fresh pair of bottoms before climbing into bed. 

“Why do we have to wear clothes still?” Ten complained while stepping into a pair of flannels Kun procured for him. “It’s just us.”

“It’s just decent,” Kun said with his face turned away from Ten’s lithe form. He was certain he’d embarrass himself if he had to sleep next to Ten’s entirely naked body. “Look, I’m wearing pajamas, so I’d feel more comfortable if you wore pants.”

He heard the covers on the bed rustle and the mattress squeak as Ten climbed in. A moment later, Ten sighed, “All covered up. You can look, now.”

“I’m not afraid of  _ looking, _ Ten,” Kun groused, stepping around to his side of the bed and climbing in as well. Ten was grinning from ear to ear, eyes following Kun’s movements. As soon as Kun was settled, Kun had the air knocked out of his lungs by Ten barrelling into his chest.

“Smells like you everywhere,” Ten moaned a little drunkenly. Kun pushed his thighs together with a squeak. “Thank you for letting me stay.”

“O-of course,” Kun stuttered, shifting so that he could wrap his arm around Ten’s shoulders. Ten wiggled cutely to settle in closer and sighed in content, his lips parted and his eyes slowly falling shut. His lips looked so soft, Kun thought. He wondered if Ten ever thought about kissing Kun the way Kun thought about kissing him. 

“What are you thinking about?” Ten murmured.

Kun startled like he’d been caught snooping in the shadows. He shut the bedside table lamp off, plunging them into sudden darkness. “Nothing. Goodnight, Ten.”

“G’night,” Ten sang out quietly. He pressed his lips to Kun’s collarbones, over the bruises that were probably still visible to him there in the moonlight.

.

Kun dreamed he was in a car and someone else was driving. This time, he was in the passenger seat. The landscape outside the windows had changed from cold ocean to mountainous forest. The moon threw daggers of light between the tops of the trees. They passed a sign by the side of the road, illuminated by the car’s headlights, but Kun couldn’t discern the garbled letters while he dreamed.

“I think it’s happening again,” Kun said. He looked into his distorted reflection in the passenger-side window but a woman with long black hair and pale skin looked back. He gasped. She gasped. 

“Hold onto him,” the driver said, demanded. She flashed her eyes at her sister, who recoiled at the ferocity within her gaze. “We need him--” 

One of the sisters in the backseat spoke up timidly. “What if he doesn’t want to help us? What we’re asking him to do...”

The car lurched to the side, knocking all the sisters off balance with the sudden motion. One of them screamed. 

The driver righted the vehicle again and growled, “ _ Don’t. _ ” She looked at Kun, who was her sister, and her eyes were a brilliant violet that burned into Kun’s retinas. He tried to shield his eyes against the glare, but found he couldn’t move his body. He was paralyzed, and fear gripped him like a hand around his throat.

“No…” Kun groaned, fighting and struggling against the invisible binds that were like writhing snakes. “Wake up, wake up, wake up, wake up…!”

He sat up with a gasp like he’d just been saved from drowning and clawed at his neck as though a noose had been hung around it. There was an anvil on his chest and it was going to make his ribcage cave in. He heaved in a breath and sobbed when he felt someone force his hands away from his neck and back down onto the bed. 

“Kun! Kun, stop, you’ll hurt yourself! Kun, wake up!”

Kun blinked and saw Ten’s face, the glow of his eyes. He took a great, shuddering breath, and broke off from the dream with a muffled cry, using his next breath to gain his bearings, to calm his frantically beating heart. “You can let go of my hands, Ten,” Kun whispered.

Ten let go of his wrists immediately but stayed close, his lips downturned into a worried pout, his eyes noticeably misty. “What happened?”

“Bad dream,” Kun muttered reflexively. But then he shook his head. It had felt like a dream at first but now Kun was convinced that it was not one at all. Kun knew in his heart of hearts that the sisters were real. That they were driving through a changing landscape. That they were looking for someone. “Or -- I think -- I think I saw something that was happening in real life, right now, like I was there. Is that possible?”

“Tell me about it?” Ten opened up his side so that Kun could sag against him with his head on Ten’s shoulder. He still smelled of cedar and pine and freshly turned dirt, and the scent calmed Kun as much as afternoons spent around his family’s kitchen table folding dumplings with each other. Kun placed his hand over Ten’s chest, feeling his racing heart slowing gradually with each breath. Ten was warm and familiar.

“We’re in a car,” Kun started, going back to the beginning as though he were rewinding an old cassette tape. “There are four of us. We’re sisters.” Ten curved his arm behind Kun’s back and began to pet his side with feather-light strokes. The comforting action dropped Kun back into the landscape of his dreams with startling clarity and detail. “We’re driving up the coast,” he recalled as the scene played out behind his eyes. “Last night it was the ocean. Tonight it was forest and mountain. The moon is bright, and important. Their eyes are violet. There is something that needs to be done in four -- no, three -- days. We pass a sign on the side of the road.”

“What does it say?”

Kun squinted at the sign in his mind’s eye, and the letters began to clear. “ _ Vancouver 184 _ ,” Kun recited.

“They’re coming here,” Ten said with a certainty Kun didn’t feel.

“What? How can you know?”

“Because you’re here,” Ten said. “You said they’ve already reached out to you twice. Last night, by the ocean. Tonight, in the mountains.”

“Why would they reach out to me?”

Ten shrugged underneath him. “Why would anyone reach out to anyone else? For help?”

“How can I help them?” Kun asked; then, increasingly frantically, “What do they want, Ten?” Kun curled his fist tight against Ten’s chest. He was starting to feel unmoored again, like he was a ship being battered on all sides by a storm. He couldn’t even get a handle on his magic and keep Ten safe, and now someone needed his help? How could he possibly help them?

In response, Ten held Kun tighter, urging him to lie back down on the bed, and once they were settled, Ten pulled the covers all the way up to Kun’s chin and locked him in an embrace, carding his fingers through Kun’s hair and cradling him close with Kun’s head on his chest. 

“ _Shh_ , it's okay. We’ll talk to Johnny and Taeil in the morning about it, Kun. Maybe Taeil will know something. He’s like two thousand years old. He has to know something.”

“Doesn’t Taeil want to get rid of me?”

“Not anymore,” Ten said. 

Kun exhaled as the anxiety slowly fizzed out of him, finding comfort in Ten’s nearness. He was so happy Ten was back. This world would be too overwhelming to navigate on his own. 

Then he clutched at Ten’s arms when he realized something terrible. “What if they want _you?_ ” Kun asked, eyes wide. “What if they’re coming to find  you? What if they’re connected to the hunters? Or maybe they  _ are  _ hunters? What if they’re coming -- coming to take you away again? What did the hunters want with you? What did they do?” 

He needed to know. The more information he had, the more he could make sense of it. He wanted to know everything. “Ten, please tell me…” Kun pleaded with him quietly. 

Ten shuddered, his heart thudding harder under Kun’s ear, and Kun cursed himself quietly, wondering if he’d crossed a line by bringing Ten’s captivity up again. Maybe Ten wasn’t ready to talk about it still. But the absence of detail only made Kun’s mind conjure up increasingly horrific scenes of torture. He pressed his lips to Ten’s sternum in apology.

“I...I don’t know what they wanted with me, Kun,” Ten started slowly in a voice thick with pain. Kun listened with rapt attention. “They kept me in silver chains. It hurt so much that everything was foggy, like it wasn’t really happening to me. But they were keeping me alive. They fed me. They talked about wanting to kill me. Sometimes I would wake up in my body and remember you, and I tried to run. I felt your spell, its call,  _ your  _ call. It was so strong, but I couldn’t -- I couldn’t--” 

Ten hiccuped and then fell silent, sniffling against Kun’s hair as Kun rubbed his sides and waited to see if Ten would continue, not wanting to interrupt.

“The silver injection was the last thing. They’d had enough of me running, I guess. I really don’t remember anything after that.”

Figuring out what the violet-eyed women from Kun’s dream wanted did not feel as urgent anymore as Ten fought to keep his breathing regular. Ten was right; they’d talk to Johnny and Taeil in the morning and figure it out with them, somehow. The sisters’ shadowed shapes slipped through Kun’s fingertips, and Ten remained in front of him, hurting, real and solid and whole. He drew himself up so that they were face to face on the same pillow and gently, slowly, cupped his hand around Ten’s cheek. Ten’s eyes flicked to his own, and Kun marveled at how perfectly those golden irises seemed to capture and reflect the moonlight streaming in from the window. Ten was just as enchanting as ever to look at, his wild beauty unleashing something deep and possessive inside of Kun. 

“Did Taeil kill them?” Kun asked.

“No,” Ten whispered. “But he ran them off. They won’t be back, I don’t think.”

“I wish he had killed them.” He was not shocked by the thought made known, nor by the depth of that desire, but Ten’s eyelids fluttered as his mouth opened in a quiet gasp. Kun would never let anyone or anything hurt Ten again, himself included. 

“Don’t say things like that,” Ten said softly, leaning forward to brush the tip of his nose over Kun’s steady pulse.

“But I mean it. I’ll do anything so you don’t get hurt again.”

Ten pushed his face into Kun’s neck with a groan, murmuring against Kun’s heated skin, “And I’ll do anything for you, too.” He licked at the spot over Kun’s pulse, one long, rough stroke of his tongue, and then closed his mouth over it, inhaling deeply. Kun tightened his hold around Ten instinctively, head lolling back to bare his throat further. He closed his eyes as a ripple of pleasure shook through him while Ten ravaged his neck with licks and tiny nips with his teeth. When Ten’s teeth scraped against his skin harder, Kun moaned shakily, his toes curling under the covers.

“Ten--!” Kun gasped, back arching. His fingers twisted into Ten’s hair. “Come up, come up, Ten.” 

Ten detached himself from Kun’s neck with a wet, sucking sound, and when he came up Kun thought he looked like a fever, his eyes the color of fire, his cheeks flushed, his lips a dark splash of red. 

Kun held him by the hair. “I’m going to kiss you,” Kun told him, panting.

“Kiss--?” Ten whined when Kun’s mouth pressed against his, but gradually melted into the soft affection of Kun’s lips. He didn’t seem to know what to do, content to lay there and make quiet, needy sounds as Kun kissed him with one hand in Ten’s hair and the other holding his cheek, but he was a quick learner, and began to give back as much as he got. He opened his mouth to Kun’s tongue and licked into Kun eagerly, pushing against Kun’s hands.

They kissed like that for a long time, passion and desire ebbing and flowing within Kun for what felt like hours. There was no hurry to the kiss, and no need from Kun’s end to go further. Not tonight. He was fairly certain this was the first time Ten had been kissed like this, and they needed to talk. Kun wanted affection, but he also wanted words, and he knew words didn’t always come easy to Ten. When he finally pulled back, it was to Ten stifling a yawn and rubbing his eyes sleepily, but still going in for another kiss.

Kun chuckled and let Ten rest his lips against his. “Let’s go back to sleep, now, Ten.”

“That felt good,” Ten whispered, a little slurred like he was drunk on Kun’s kisses. “That felt so nice.”

“It felt like that for me, too,” Kun said. He knew they had barely an hour until sunrise, and he thought about the women with the violet eyes and how close they might be to their forest, now. 

.


	4. Chapter 4

In the morning, Kun took his time with his rituals, light on his feet as the buoyant feeling from the kisses he and Ten shared lingered. He sang quietly in the shower, taking as long as he wanted, and when he came out from it damp and glistening, Ten was still asleep in the same spot in his bed, a lump under the covers. He couldn’t stop smiling as he dressed in soft, comfortable clothes, and after, he sat on the bed and woke Ten by carding his fingers through his hair and scratching at the base of his skull.

“Hnng ah,” Ten huffed unintelligibly, spine curving under Kun’s touch as he twisted himself in the covers. He rolled over and somehow planted his face in Kun’s lap, sinking into him with a sigh.

“Wake up,” Kun suggested.

“No,” Ten said, and then Kun was being pulled onto the mattress with a joyful yelp. He pretended to struggle under Ten’s strong hold, laughing when Ten pressed him down and stilling with a shiver when Ten growled against his neck. 

Kissing Ten was the best decision Kun had ever made. They lost most of their morning to Ten lazily licking over Kun’s pulse and rubbing the soft skin of his cheek over Kun’s smooth, freshly-shaven jawline.

While Kun was driving them over to Taeil and Johnny’s, Ten complaining under his breath the whole time that it would have been faster for him to shift and run, the sun was already high in the sky, and Kun could not seem to stop smiling. Ten played with the fingers of his hand not on the steering wheel quietly, tracing the life lines in his palm, as Kun eased them around the corner of the road and Johnny and Taeil's house came into view. His good mood soured when he noticed an unfamiliar car in their neighbor’s driveway.

Kun eased his foot on the brake and brought his car to a stop, turning to Ten. “Do you know who that is?”

“Who?” Ten asked, suddenly alert and darting his eyes around quickly, the start of a snarl forming on his lips. “What? Where?”

“The car,” Kun clarified. He pointed at the vehicle. It was old but still in good condition, the dark blue paint peeling in some places, a hatchback model that made Kun think of suburban families and hordes of kids piling into the seats with muddy cleats and smelly jerseys. It wasn’t the car from his dreams. 

“Oh.” Ten stilled in his seat. He stared at the unfamiliar car, and then seemingly past it. “ _Oh!_ ” He rattled the handle until the door popped open and then spilled out of the car before Kun could stop him, running with long strides -- in his bare feet, again -- to the front door.

“Ten! Ten, wait!” Kun cut off the engine, made sure he was in park, and clambered out after him. He didn't know if he should be worried or not, his breath puffing before him as he chased Ten into the house and tread his snow-covered shoes down the dark hallway into the kitchen, where the lights were on and Taeil was glowering in the corner and Johnny was trying to peel Ten off a boy with silver hair, who was struggling under the weight of him.

“Ten, down! Down!” the boy was shouting while holding an arm out to keep Johnny at bay. Kun recognized his voice before he could see his face. It was the voice of the boy who had fed him psilocybin tea in the backroom of the bookstore.

“Hold on,” Kun said toward the chaotic trio in the center of the kitchen. “What the hell is going on?”

"Shoes, off," Taeil snapped at Kun from his shadowy corner, away from the fray.

Registering that they were not in imminent danger since Ten was trying to hold onto Donghyuck’s face and lick his cheeks while Donghyuck was trying very hard to weasel himself out of Ten’s hold, Kun skipped back to the entrance and took off his shoes. When he returned in his thick socks, Taeil caught his eye from across the room and gave him a tiny nod of thanks for not melting a puddle all over his floors.

“You came back! You came back! You came back!” Ten looked like he was vibrating out of his skin. He finally succeeded in licking a long stripe up Donghyuck’s cheek and jumped back down to his own feet, wrapping his arms around the boy’s waist next and lifting him bodily into the air while he pushed his face into Donghyuck’s tummy in happiness. 

Donghyuck, meanwhile, wiped the back of his hand across his cheek. “Blegh. Yeah. Not really, Ten.” He waved at Kun with a little twiddle of his fingers. “Hi, Kun.”

Ten dropped him, his mouth in a wide smile as he looked back and forth between Donghyuck and Kun. “You know each other? Kun, you know Haechan?”

Kun narrowed his eyes and involuntarily stepped back, wariness returning to him. “Haechan? You told me your name was Donghyuck.”

“It is,” Donghyuck said. “Haechan’s a nickname, an old one. I go by Donghyuck, now.” 

Next to him, Johnny flinched, his huge form seeming to shrink before Kun’s very eyes. “Hae-- Hyuck--” He reached out his hand, only to violently wrench it back when Donghyuck glared at him.

Taeil appeared at Johnny’s side in an instant, presenting himself as a shield between his partner and the witch from the bookstore, and only then did Ten take a step back, and then another and another, until he could reach back and take Kun’s hand. 

“If you’re not here to apologize and make amends, then why have you returned?” Taeil hissed. 

“Maybe I shouldn’t have come back,” Donghyuck said haughtily, puffing up his chest. “Since you’re still here.”

“This is _my_ house, brat!” Taeil growled, starting forward and only catching himself at Johnny’s quiet exhalation of his name.

Johnny sighed, long suffering. “ _Taeil._ Don't start this now, please. It’s -- it’s good to see you, Donghyuck. No matter the circumstances. You’re holding up well?”

Donghyuck scowled. “Don’t pretend that you care. You didn't even tell me Ten was missing! I had to find out through--!" He broke off with an agitated grunt. "I only came to tell you what I Saw, since you wouldn’t pick up your stupid phone.”

“What you Saw?”

“Yeah, I Saw something new. Something different. Something has changed,” Donghyuck said, nodding with his chin toward Kun. “He was in it.”

Now Ten stepped in front of him protectively, and Kun had to peer over his shoulder to look at the violet-eyed boy. “What? Me?” 

“Yes, you. You are here, at the end of it all. You, and a girl, and everyone else is dead. Everything is gone.” Donghyuck swallowed then, his eyes flicking to Johnny, the emotion behind his irises thick and desperate. “Do you understand? You die.” 

Kun pushed at Ten’s shoulder, standing level with him. “What is that? You can see the future?”

“ _A_ future,” Donghyuck corrected. “We can always change it. The choices we make bring us closer to what I see, or we diverge from that path.” That desperation behind his eyes returned as Donghyuck stared at Johnny, but Johnny looked away, his lips twisted into a grimace. “In order to change it, you have to make the _right_ choices.”

“Haechan, you know that I...I can't just leave,” Johnny said, exhaustion heavy in his voice.

“It’s Donghyuck, Johnny,” Donghyuck insisted. He shook his head. “You don’t have to _be_ here.”

“It's not that simple--”

Donghyuck screamed, the sound wretched and piercing. It startled Johnny into silence. “Fuck this, I’m going,” Donghyuck announced. 

Before Kun could understand it, Donghyuck had stormed past them and was stomping down the hallway. At the door, he bent over and angrily pulled his boots on, only half-heartedly tying them up before grappling with the doorknob.

“Donghyuck,” Ten whimpered sadly, the only one to follow after him. Johnny and Taeil stood frozen under the kitchen lights, and Kun could not decide which pair needed him more between them. “You don’t have to go…”

“I can’t stand him,” Donghyuck said through clenched teeth. He finally wrenched the door open. “He keeps choosing _him_. Choosing death.”

“Don’t leave yet. We miss you…I miss you...”

“I'm glad you're okay, Ten. Come visit me in the city,” Donghyuck said, stepping in to give Ten a final hug and needing to pull Ten’s hands off of him to end it, “and try to stay alive, will you?” 

He left abruptly, and Ten stood in the doorway facing the cold long after the kid’s car had disappeared.

In the kitchen, Johnny had turned nearly as pale as the snow outside and was so still that Kun worried if he was still breathing. His grip on Taeil’s shoulder was white-knuckled, but Taeil showed no signs of being bothered by it. Kun didn’t know how to break the tense, dreadful silence that Donghyuck had left behind in his wake, and in the end, it was Johnny who heaved a breath finally and said, “I have to -- check the wards.”

Taeil let him go, watching forlornly as Johnny stumbled across the kitchen like a drunk man and lumbered down the hall with stiff limbs. Johnny called for Ten at the door. “Will you come? Please?”

The protest was fast on Kun’s lips -- he did _not_ want to be left alone with Taeil -- but Ten looked at Kun with such a beseeching expression that Kun nodded instead, shocked, and Ten turned on his heel and erupted into wolf skin outside, leaving a pile of clothes on the front steps. Had he been asking Kun for permission? 

“Blood relations,” Taeil said behind Kun’s ear, causing Kun to jump out of his skin when he turned to find Taeil just behind his shoulder. Taeil smirked at Kun’s surprise. “They are brothers, and I am the fissure between them.”

Kun’s hand flew up to guard his own neck. Taeil’s eyes dropped to his throat and a dark shadow of emotion flitted across his features. The vampire stepped back, lowering his head contritely. “I am sorry about the bruises. No need to cover your neck today, Kun. I am fed. And Ten would be very cross with me if I hurt you.”

“That’s...nice,” Kun stuttered, inching his way along the kitchen wall toward the counters. “What do you mean you’re the fissure between them?”

“Come, sit. I’ll make tea,” Taeil offered. “It’s been a long, wild adventure for you these past few days, hasn’t it?”

“I’ll stand, thanks.”

Taeil puffed air out of his nose in frustration but nodded again and went about filling up a kettle with water from the sink. When he had placed the kettle on the stove and ignited the flame underneath, he said, “Johnny and I, we are each other’s. His brother has a difficult time understanding why and how Johnny could love me, so he has chosen to be dramatic and make it very hard on Johnny. Donghyuck is a child. He will come to his senses eventually.”

Kun watched the blue flames lick at the underside of the kettle. “Do his visions always come to pass?”

“Not always,” Taeil said. “Like what Donghyuck said, futures are changeable. Heed the warning, but I would not take what he Saw as set in stone.”

That settled the hornets buzzing around in Kun’s stomach considerably. Though he didn’t necessarily like Taeil yet, he found he trusted him -- at least about this kind of thing. If Taeil wasn’t going to pay Donghyuck’s vision much esteem, then maybe Kun shouldn’t either. Still, something niggled at Kun about what Donghyuck said.

“What did he mean, though? About the choices. About choosing death.”

“You are all mortal,” Taeil said. “All your choices lead to death.”

“But what did he mean when he said I am there at the end of it all?”

Taeil leaned his hip against the stove casually, crossing his arms. “I don’t know. You tell me, Kun.”

At that moment, Kun saw Johnny loping through the snow beyond Taeil through the windows in the kitchen. Ten trotted after him, stopping whenever Johnny stopped. Golden sparks flew from Johnny’s fingertips when he checked the wards, reminding Kun of a mechanic welding pieces of metal together in an autoshop. Wards, dreams, and futures. The healing warmth of a cozy fire in your belly after a good meal. There seemed to be nothing about magic that Kun could touch, could grasp with his hands, and yet it surrounded him everywhere. 

He was not amused by Taeil’s cryptic response. He crossed his arms as well, broadening his stance. “Ten told me you’re ancient and old. That you know a lot. But you don’t know this?”

“How could I know this, Kun? You are a stranger to me, unknown.”

“Is that why you’re scared of me?” Kun challenged him.

Within a blink of an eye, Taeil was nose to nose with Kun, who had been expecting the movement and stubbornly refused to let his body show any sign of surprise. Taeil’s top canines dropped with a sound that reminded Kun of a bullet finding its home in a chamber.

“I am not scared of you,” Taeil whispered icily. “But you have brought attention that I do not like to these woods. And you put my family in danger.”

“I’d never hurt Ten. Or Johnny.”

“You already have.”

It was like Kun’s heart had turned to stone. He replayed images of Ten trying to leave yesterday and Kun throwing him into the back of the couch. Not on purpose. On accident. But it still turned his stomach and made his mouth fill with sourness. But how could Taeil know that had happened? 

No, he was referring to something else. The hunters.

“That wasn’t me.” Kun shook his head, his arms tightening around his body. “That was hunters. That wasn’t me.”

“Hunters haven’t crossed into these woods for decades. Then you come along,” Taeil hissed. His eyes flashed dark red like rubies. 

“I didn’t mean for anything to happen!” Kun cried. “What they did to Ten was awful, but that wasn’t me. I’m not a monster.”

“Ah, but we are, aren't we?” Taeil’s haunted smile crept across his lips slowly. 

This wasn’t the point. This wasn’t the point at all! Kun had come here with Ten in the hopes that Taeil would be able to help them, and all Kun was doing was antagonizing him. So Johnny’s estranged baby brother hated Taeil and saw a future that wasn’t all that great in which Kun and some girl had been the centerpieces. Kun mentally added it as another puzzle in a growing pile of them for him to solve; he was determined to solve them all, even when most of the time it felt like all of the pieces had been jumbled together into the same, huge, ever-expanding box, so that he couldn’t tell where one mystery ended and another one began.

The most pressing mystery in the pile right now, though, were the four sisters driving toward them from his dreams. They were probably already within the city limits.

He sighed and brought his fingers to his temples, massaging them as the kettle on the stove began to whistle, its tone loud and piercing. Taeil appeared beside the stove instantly and turned off the burner. He began to prepare a mug of English breakfast for himself and a mug of jasmine green tea for Kun, and Kun found that he was strangely touched that Taeil had remembered.

“I don’t care what you are,” Kun said when Taeil handed him the steaming mug. “And I don’t believe that Ten is a monster. I just want to know what I can do to keep Ten safe. We came because I -- I Saw something, too. I think.”

A spark of interest lit up Taeil's eyes. “You've opened yourself up to it, finally. Another Seer in the family?”

“I -- I guess?”

Taeil strode over to the table, sat silently, and sipped at his dark brew with hooded eyes. “Go on, then.”

Kun followed, his chair scraping against the floor when he pulled it back, his mug knocking against the wood when he placed it. He cleared his throat. “Well, I had a dream.”

“Humans often do,” Taeil drawled, bored.

“Well, this one was strange. It was like I was there. I’m in a car with four sisters and we’re driving toward Vancouver. They...they need help, I think. I think they know I’m in the car with them. Last night the driver looked right at me in the dream -- I mean, I was her sister in the dream, but she looked right at me. I remember that now. Her eyes looked like Donghyuck’s.”

“Four sisters, not five?” Taeil asked.

Kun recounted the sisters in his head. The driver, the sister in the passenger seat, the two in the back. “Just four. Why?”

“Five makes the points of a pentagram,” Taeil said. “If they are witches, then they are not a complete coven.”

Witches, all of them. For some reason, this thought had not crossed Kun’s mind. What if they were looking for a fifth? What if they were looking for Kun after all, and wanted him to join them?

“Is that all?” 

Kun rolled his shoulders back and dragged more details up to share, bothered by Taeil’s uninterested tone. “No. They also -- they also mention needing to do something in a couple days.”

“The full moon approaches,” Taeil said. “They will perform a ritual or rite then. That is custom.”

“But why am I seeing them? Why are they in my dreams?”

“That, I can’t answer. Why do you not simply ask them, next time?”

Again, another thought that had not crossed Kun’s mind. He was not a passive player in his own dreams. They were in his brain somehow, after all. There had to be some way he could communicate with them. “Right,” Kun said, a little deflated by Taeil’s nonchalance to what Kun had been worrying over for hours. Then again, maybe such a dream was boring to Taeil’s hundreds or thousands of years of life. “I will. I’ll ask them.”

“Good. Anything else?”

There was nothing else. Nothing but the dread that remained in Kun’s stomach when he thought of the sisters and what they wanted, but he didn’t think Taeil would be interested in his feelings. “No, I think -- I think that’s all.”

“I’m no Seer, Kun. Ask them what they want, and then decide if you can provide it.”

“What if I can’t?”

Taeil shrugged. “What’s the saying? We’ll burn that bridge when we get there.”

“I don’t think that’s it…”

The door banged open and the sound of Johnny stomping the snow from his boots quickly followed. Taeil stood noiselessly, and in his expression Kun saw concern, and guardedness, and love. When Johnny strolled into the kitchen, head down and shoulders rounded, Taeil went to him, pulling him to his side and guiding him into the seat he’d just vacated. “How are the wards holding up?” he asked him.

“Fine,” Johnny choked out, cupping his hands around Taeil’s mug of tea. 

Kun got the feeling they were not really talking about the wards. He twisted in his seat when he heard Ten’s light footsteps behind him, smiling warmly when he saw that Ten’s cheeks and the tip of his nose were petal pink with cold. Ten had shrugged his sweater and too-long pants back on, but the frost was lingering on his breath.

“Hey,” Kun breathed, startling when Ten, rather than taking the seat next to Kun, plopped down to the floor by his feet and placed his head in Kun’s lap. His fingers naturally fell to Ten’s hair, stroking through the strands tenderly. “You okay?”

Ten butted his head up into Kun’s hand as his arms came up to wrap loosely around Kun’s waist, sighing contentedly. “What were you talking about?”

“Kun’s vision,” Taeil said.

“Vision? So you’re a real witch now.” Johnny quirked an eyebrow, bringing the mug to his lips. The first sip seemed to bring color back into his pallid cheeks. He did not seem surprised by the news, and Kun wondered just how long they had been waiting for him to See. Or Wake Up. Or whatever it was.

“Hardly,” Kun mumbled. “I still don’t know anything about anything.”

“But what was in it? Is there anything we need to worry about?” Johnny asked.

“Just four sisters coming our way,” Taeil said.

Johnny hummed. “Four is not five.”

“No,” Taeil agreed. “It is not.”

“Not a complete coven,” Kun added, to which Johnny tilted his head in acknowledgement, his eyes widening.

“You knew?”

“I just learned. From Taeil. What does it mean? That they aren’t strong? We aren’t a coven, either.”

Taeil laughed. “We?”

“I just meant — well, I guess I don’t know what I meant,” Kun finished lamely, embarrassed, feeling chastised once again. Under his palm, Ten shifted and whined, pushing his head closer to Kun’s belly, and Kun’s heart trembled for him. “I’ll ask what they want, if they show up in my dreams again, but I don’t want to be completely unprepared for when they come. If they come. Do you know what I mean?”

He directed his question at Johnny, who considered Kun for a long moment with dark and searching eyes. The pain of his brother’s visit had been dulled by the walk around the perimeter, but Kun could see now that it had always been present -- in the downturned, sharp corners of his mouth, in the wrinkle at his brow, in the way Johnny’s eyes had always taken a half-second to catch up to his smiles. 

Johnny’s lip twitched, his posture softening and his eyes brightening. “Yes,” he said, “I know what you mean.”

.

The library in Johnny and Taeil’s house was a dusty annex beyond an archway that appeared in the living room when Johnny paced before an old landscape painting that hung between two windows three times. He presented the archway to Kun with a knowing, smug grin on his lips as his eyes flashed violet. 

“Is this real?” Kun asked, holding his hands out in front of him and audibly gasping when his palms were not stopped by a wall. He fell through the archway gracelessly and stumbled past end tables and stacks of books, scrolls and feathered things, jars filled with ingredients Kun didn’t recognize right away. The library was filled with cobwebs clinging to the corners and hanging from the bookshelves. A well-worn couch in the center sagged low in the seats, and many books that had been pulled from the overcrowded shelves littered the surface of the coffee table. There was a television in a media station squashed in one corner, but it was so bulky and out of place that Kun wondered for a moment if it could even broadcast in color. 

Kun followed Johnny to the couch, falling into a seat when Johnny nudged him with a finger. Dust kicked up around him upon impact, and Kun’s eyes watered as he coughed and breathed in musk.

“Oh, very real,” Johnny said. 

Earlier, Taeil had disappeared into the basement where he claimed his home office to be, leaving Kun and Johnny alone to talk about their “witchy things” together, but Ten had bounded into the living room after Kun and promptly followed them through the archway into the library.

Now, Ten curled up on the couch next to Kun after the dust settled. “Once Johnny closed the door behind himself because he forgot I was in here…” he said. “I was stuck in here for a whole day!”

“I found you, in the end,” Johnny reminded him.

Ten rolled his eyes, and Kun patted his head in consolation.

“The first thing you should know about magic,” Johnny said, walking over to the bookshelves and running his finger down the spines of a couple of volumes, “is that it’s wild and ancient. You’re calling upon spirits and gods and deities. You can’t hope to contain or control it completely. You can only guide it with your intention, belief, and the occasional sacrifice.”

“Like, with spells and wands and stuff?” Kun asked.

“Yes, and no,” Johnny said. “Spells and incantations help to open the door to magic. You let it in. You invite it to consider your bidding. It takes energy to mold and to maintain. Wands aren’t really a thing. You can’t like, point a stick at something, say a few words, and make it levitate. That’s probably not you; that’s a poltergeist playing a trick on you.”

“So ghosts are real, too?” Kun swallowed and was drawn to investigate the shadows, half expecting a floating spectre with a human face to be peering out at him from the darkness, but the shadows were just shadows. 

“Of course,” Ten said from near Kun’s lap. Kun drew his head down onto it since Ten couldn’t seem to be away from it for very long. Ten kicked his bare feet in a little display of happiness.

He thought again of what he had done to Ten yesterday, throwing him across the room with a flick of his hand, a knot forming in his stomach. “So what if -- what if I _can_ make things levitate?”

“Have you done that?”

Kun bowed his body over Ten’s, holding him close in apology. “I didn’t mean to,” Kun mumbled. Ten squirmed and popped his face up for air, giving Kun a quick kiss on the cheek before settling again. 

“Your connection with magic is very raw right now,” Johnny explained with a furrowed brow. “And strong. You’re manifesting late. Really late. But when you Awaken, that wildness channels through you without any barriers. It should settle eventually, but if you don’t learn how to put up those barriers properly…”

“What? What happens?”

“Like I said, magic takes energy to mold and maintain. If you let it, its entropy will just drain you. Imagine your access to magic is a valve. You have to learn to control the flow, otherwise you’ll bust the pipe. Like Vesuvius in Pompeii.”

“That sounds hard.” Kun gnawed on his lips anxiously.

“It isn’t too complicated. Meditation works.”

Kun’s eyes widened in surprise. “That’s it? Meditation?”

“Or, you know. Whatever works for you. Your flow state. You know that concept? When you’re doing something and you’re fully immersed, and you lose time?”

Kun thought of cooking, preparing meals for friends and family. Ten puttering around the kitchen with him smelling spices and dipping his finger into pots and pans for a taste. “Yeah,” Kun said.

“When you’re in flow, pay attention to the way the magic courses through you. You’ll be able to feel it. Once you know what it feels like, that becomes easier to control.”

Johnny pulled the volumes he had touched from the shelves, gathering them into a small pile in his arms and bringing them to Kun, who leaned forward intending to clear some space on the coffee table for the stack, but Johnny just placed these books on top of an existing pile. At the very top sat a slim book with a cover made of simple brown leather, warm and worn through the many hands that had touched it, the words _A Study of Native Flora and their Medicinal Properties and Uses, 1909_ embossed in the center. Johnny tapped it. “I found this one in an old witch’s bookstore in Seattle. It’s still good.”

Kun fanned through the others in the pile. _The Book of Stones. The Emerald Tablet of Hermes, Excerpts and Translations. Metamorphoses._ He picked up the last, a familiar paperback that brought him back to high school Latin class. “Really? Ovid?”

“These are just starting places,” Johnny said. He eased himself onto the arm of the couch. “There’s a lot of magic in the words, and in between the lines. How did Circe transform the people who invaded her island into animals? Potions and focused intent, not hocus pocus.”

“Well, she was a god. And probably not real.”

“Wasn’t she?” Johnny asked in a cryptic tone that immediately reminded Kun of Taeil. 

Kun looked through the books again. He picked up _A Study of Native Flora and their Medicinal Properties and Uses._ “What’s this one?”

“I thought you might be drawn to that one. You might be able to use it for your cooking. You can keep it if you want.”

“But how do I -- how do I learn this stuff? Magic. Is there a foundational book, or--?” Kun’s eyes lit up as he remembered. “Wait, Ten said you could be my guide.”

“Guide? Well, I don’t know about that--”

“But how else will I learn?” Kun asked, sitting up straighter as the idea took hold of him. “I need someone to teach me. I have no idea what I’m doing with all this. What if I hurt someone?” Ten pressed his face against Kun’s belly and rubbed a hand up and down his side as Kun caught himself breathing harder. He exhaled shakily.

“I can teach you some things,” Johnny promised. A shadow passed over his face again. “But I don’t think I could take on another apprentice right now. Not so soon after Haechan -- Donghyuck, I mean.”

Oh, Kun thought. So the thing with Johnny’s brother was not just about Taeil. There was something deeper to it, and it was apparent in the way Johnny’s face tightened that he did not want to talk about it. In his lap, Ten whimpered and curled tighter around him, mumbling something about missing the other boy, and Kun nodded to show that he understood. “For now, then,” Kun agreed. “Something for now, so I’m not totally inept when the sisters get here. Just in case. And then later, maybe later, when more time has passed, we can talk about it again.”

Kun didn’t know what he himself meant by ‘later.’ In less than two months time, he was supposed to be back in his apartment in Vancouver with a first draft of his book submitted and ready to be eviscerated by a team of editors at the publishing company. The life he would be returning to felt utterly foreign to him now. 

“Maybe,” Johnny said.

.

“Eat this.” Kun placed a plate on the coffee table in front of Ten, who was squinting at a page in the _Metamorphoses_ with the book turned upside-down, his legs tucked under the throw blanket on their couch. Chicken thighs gleamed on the plate, their skins golden from roasting, over a bed of potatoes that had been mashed with garlic and sage-infused butter. Fat cloves of roasted garlic were sprinkled throughout, and a layer of finishing salt glimmered on top of everything. “It’s for protection.”

“The chicken?” Ten asked, sitting up straighter and putting the book to the side. He took the spoon Kun held out to him.

“The garlic and sage, I think, according to that book,” Kun said. “I did everything Johnny said to do -- called upon the hearth deities for their blessings, prepared everything with intention, and thanked them when I was done.” He didn’t share how silly he felt muttering prayers aloud to himself in the kitchen, asking for spirits to bless his mixing spoon and chef’s knife. No one had responded. Were they supposed to?

“Well, Taeil won’t come near me for a while with all this garlic.” Ten laughed and dug his spoon into the fluffy potatoes, stuffing a steaming cloud into his mouth. “It’s so good,” he praised with his mouth full.

“I don’t know if I did it right,” Kun worried aloud. He rubbed at the small pendant that lay over the hollow of his throat. Johnny had gifted him the shard of amethyst on a thin golden chain before they left the house, telling Kun to keep it on him at all times. _“And don’t let anyone else touch it,”_ he’d warned. _“It’s yours now.”_ It was warm between his fingers, almost like it was heated from within. 

“You did it right. I feel _so_ protected,” Ten said, popping a whole garlic clove into his mouth. “C’mere…” He tugged at the fabric of Kun’s pants to pull him closer and Kun went toward him easily, hands falling to Ten’s shoulders. “You should eat, too.”

“I nibbled,” Kun said. “I honestly don’t think I could keep anything down. I’m nervous about tonight…”

Ten curved an arm behind Kun’s waist and raised his other hand before Kun’s belly, looking up from under his eyelashes at him in question, and Kun nodded at him. Ten giving him belly rubs was certainly a change in their usual dynamic, but as soon as Ten’s palm curved warm and lovely over Kun’s stomach Kun felt the tension leak from behind his ears and shoulders. “Sit,” Ten murmured. “Rest. Things will be fine. And if there’s any trouble, we’ll figure it out.”

“After what happened to you,” Kun started, resting his hand over Ten’s on his belly, “how can I not worry? You’re not worried at all?”

Ten shook his head. “It’s not that. I just believe in you.”

Heat flared at the tips of Kun’s ears. For someone who greatly appreciated uncomplicated candor, Ten’s bold and heartfelt declarations cushioned in the soft, high tone of his voice and his guileless expressions still flustered him. When Ten said he believed in him, he meant it, completely and unequivocally. To Kun, that felt foolish, and brave, and admirable.

“C’mon, sit.” Ten tugged at Kun again. “You smell worried. Anxious.”

“You can smell that on me?” Kun fell onto the couch beside Ten with a sigh, finding himself curling against Ten naturally, his arms and legs and the rest of his body already knowing the way. “Maybe I just won’t sleep, and the sisters won’t come, and we won’t have to worry about it anymore.”

“You can’t stay awake forever,” Ten said.

“You’re right. I only managed an all-nighter once in my college years...I’m awful at that.”

Ten buried his face into Kun’s chest with a muffled laugh. “I’ll be right next to you the whole time. I’ll fight those witches in your dreams!” 

“If only.” 

“We can kiss again,” Ten suggested. “That felt really nice, before.” Kun’s heart somersaulted inside of him, thumping wildly at the thought. Ten, ear against Kun’s chest, looked up at him with a devilish smirk. “You like the idea.”

“I--”

Ten leaped up and dropped his hands to Kun’s shoulders, holding him in place. Before he could lower his mouth to Kun’s, though, Ten’s breath fanned across his face and Kun coughed, protesting and pushing him away. 

“You just ate a _whole_ clove of garlic!” 

“So?” Ten tilted his head. “It’s just garlic!” He leaned forward again, but Kun clapped a hand over Ten’s mouth.

“Nuh uh. Brush your teeth and gargle for about twenty minutes before you come anywhere near me with that stinky breath.”

“Kun--!” Ten shot him a plaintive, heart-wrenching look with his eyes and it absolutely leveled Kun to the ground. He could not resist, could not imagine a world where he’d want to, and so he let go, and Ten’s lips were on his in the next moment. “Is it nice?” Ten asked with his lips mashed against Kun’s.

“Not in the slightest,” Kun responded, words just as muffled. He felt the shape of Ten’s lips shift into a pout and held him fast by the nape of his neck when he began to pull away. “I didn’t say to stop.”

Ten laughed, and to Kun it was the sound of pure joy, a sound he wished he could gather up into his hands and bring to his ear like he was listening for the ocean in a conch shell. He was listening for what lay beyond that joy, deep within the coils of that shell, for he believed it was love.

.

The ground was soft underfoot as Kun jogged along the familiar trail. Sunlight streamed through the trees overhead, half-dead leaves still clinging onto their branches. _In, two, three. Out, two, three._ Here, the petrified tree stump. There, the rock that always made Kun giggle when he ran past it. He was not sure how long he’d been running, but he thought it had been a while. A fork came up in the trail, one path that circled back to his cabin and the other that led to the dilapidated shack between his and Johnny and Taeil’s houses. He veered down the latter, and the trail narrowed.

Ahead of him, a girl in a red summer dress appeared in the woods.

Kun stopped running. He was a fair distance away from the girl, so that he could not make out her features, but her head hung oddly between her shoulders, and her hair was long and unkempt and black as pitch. “Hello?” Kun called out to her.

“Hello,” came her reply. Her voice was sweet and hypnotic. “Hello, hello, hello,” she chirruped.

“Who are you?” Kun asked, confused and worried for her. “Do you need help?”

“Who am I?” she trilled. “Do I need help?” She turned abruptly and began to skip down the trail, pausing to look over her shoulder and beckon at Kun every odd step. 

“Do not follow her.” 

Kun jumped back at the woman who had appeared suddenly at his side. She narrowed violet eyes at him. Her small, heart-shaped face and long black hair pulled at a memory in Kun’s subconscious. The driver. “You!”

She smiled. “Me.”

“What is this? Who are you? Where -- where are we?”

“We are dreaming,” she said. Her gaze flicked to the shard of amethyst at Kun’s throat. “Who gave you the pendant? You weren’t wearing that before.”

Kun darted his hand up to clutch it protectively. “A friend.”

“A good friend?”

Kun merely stared at her. She was a whole head shorter than he stood yet her presence was like that of an icebreaker ship plowing through glaciers. He felt the urge to simply get out of her way. 

“You didn’t think that would keep me out, did you?” she asked, her gaze sharpening.

Kun’s heart leapt up to his throat, hammering fast. But he was dreaming, he rationalized. He couldn’t be hurt in his own dreams, right? “It was worth a shot,” he stammered.

“Haha!” Her laughter was high and melodic, ricocheting from the trees. “Oh, you really know nothing,” she said when she’d caught her breath. “Lost little newborn, no one to Guide you?”

Kun winced at how much truth there was to her question. “Who are you?” Kun repeated. He stepped back when she stepped forward. “What do you want with me?”

“I’m Joohyun,” she said. “I’m like you, and not like you.”

“What do you mean?”

“We are witches, Sunburst,” Joohyun said. She stepped forward again, and this time Kun could not step back, for he found himself pressed against a tree trunk. “Don’t you feel how we’re connected? When you Awakened, I do believe the entire Pacific Coast felt it.”

“Like smoke in the air,” Kun whispered.

“What?”

“That’s what Ten said.” The amethyst in his palm pulsed with heat. He missed Ten, even though he knew logically that in the waking world, they were likely tangled together under the covers. He wanted to wake up; he didn’t feel a connection to this witch at all, and he didn’t like how the clouds were closing in overhead.

“Ten, your shifter?” Joohyun asked.

“How...how do you know about him?”

“He is all you think about,” Joohyun said. “Of course I know about him. We’ve been waiting for someone like you and your familiar for years.”

“Years? My familiar?” Kun asked, bewildered. The sky darkened as he narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“We need your help.”

So it was as Ten said. They needed help. Well, Kun would listen to what they had to say and be done with it. “How?”

“I want to borrow your power,” she said bluntly. Kun noticed her gaze flicker towards the sky, apprehension crossing her brow for the first time. “In return, I will teach you how to wield your magic.”

“You can just do that? Borrow it?”

She nodded, not looking at him, and unease crept into Kun’s chest. She was hiding something, something terrible. He was quite certain that the girl in the woods had been Joohyun’s dream, not his own. “What will you do with it?”

“We will bring back our sister,” she said. Ahead of them, the girl in the woods giggled, but she remained hidden in the shadows.

“Where is she?”

“She is dead.”

The sun dropped out of the sky and a thick cold darkness descended over them both. Kun shivered, his back against the tree trunk, as the chill creeped over him slowly, so cold that it burned. She wanted to bring someone back from the dead. The very idea made Kun’s stomach crawl with sickness. He remembered how Johnny said magic took energy to mold and maintain. How much did it take to maintain a life that was no longer yours? 

Joohyun’s violet eyes were brilliant and raw like the sun had taken refuge inside of them, and Kun couldn’t look away even though it meant he’d go blind. 

“That’s -- that’s impossible.”

“It isn’t impossible!” Joohyun shouted, and in her voice were her sisters’ voices, four of them blended into one, the force of her statement throwing Kun back against the trunk. As she spoke, each word felt like another stone tied to Kun’s feet as he sank deeper and deeper in a bottomless pool. “With you, it won’t be impossible. You are bursting with magic. Your connection to the universe is still new, sprung wide open. You have what we need. We love our sister. She is our heart. Help us bring her back.”

Kun fell to his knees, and Joohyun loomed over him. The forest beyond her head swirled with shadows. This is a dream, Kun thought to himself, even though the dirt he sifted between his fingers felt real. Even though his heart was pounding and he could feel cold sweat gathering at his temple and nape. He wanted to wake up. “I -- I can’t help you. I’m sorry. What you ask for -- it doesn’t feel right.”

“Kun, Sunburst, if you had lost someone you loved dearly, wouldn’t you give anything to bring them back, no matter if it is right or wrong?”

Kun thought of the genuine wonder in Ten’s expression whenever he looked upon Kun’s food, the way he fit himself into the negative spaces of Kun’s body so that he felt whole. The warmth of Ten’s eyes was equal in measure to the warmth of his heart. His curiosity and kindness, the power in his simple, unwavering faith in people. He loved him. He loved him so much, and yet.

“Death...that feels final,” Kun said. “What kind of magic brings someone back from that?”

“You know what kind.”

He unearthed the answer as though it had been buried deep inside of his body. It felt wretched coming up, and he nearly gagged. “A sacrifice,” he whispered. “No. You -- you _can’t!_ ”

“We will.” Above her, the clouds were rolling, clashing, and darkening. A storm was brewing. 

Kun pushed himself to standing, struggling under a great, invisible pressure. “You can’t use me for this.”

“We have been preparing for weeks,” Joohyun said. Thunder rolled through the clouds so loud that the ground shook with it. “You can’t stop what we’ve set out to do.”

“Weeks…” Kun shook with realization. Joohyun might as well have plunged a dagger into his heart. “ _Ten._ ” 

“The greater the sacrifice,” Joohyun with her sisters’ voices whispered, the phrase echoing off the trees until it became cacophonous and loud, like the roar of an oncoming train. 

“He is not _yours_ to sacrifice!” Kun cried, lunging forward with his hands outstretched. He would push her away and run. He’d wake up. He’d take Ten back to Taeil’s and Johnny’s where they could put up wards and protection circles and whatever else they could to keep Ten out of these witches’ hands. But he lunged and fell through Joohyun’s immaterial body and onto the ground, the wind knocked out of him. He spun onto his back, seething, scared. “You can’t. Don’t you _dare_ touch him!”

The wind whipped at Joohyun’s hair wildly, and all around them the forest was creaking and groaning. Thunder rolled across the sky again, and off in the distance, lightning struck. “Not even if we promise to teach you everything that we know? You will be one of us. You _are_ one of us.”

“I’m _not_ one of you,” Kun spat. He spoke from a deep well of truth in his body. “I am his, and he is mine.”

“I see,” Joohyun said, as the rain began to fall in heavy sheets, soaking everything through. “I had hoped that as one of us, you would help us willingly. But you have what we need, and we will use what you have, whether you are willing or not. If you had known our sister...” 

The landscape began to bleed, the trees melting like they were made of wax, the tree bark rolling over itself and leaving nothingness behind. The dream was falling apart. Kun scrambled to stand as the forest flooded, the water level fast rising to his knees and then to his chest, and then Joohyun sank underwater and did not re-emerge.

“No!” Kun shouted, clawing through the water to the spot where she’d disappeared. “Come back! You can’t do this. You can’t take him away from me again!” He cried desperately and punched his fist through the surface of the lake the forest was becoming. “Come back! Wake up! Wake up!” 

Why wouldn’t he wake? He needed to wake. He needed to get to Ten, his Ten. Soon, the water rose so high that Kun had to tread in order to stay afloat, and still the rain pelted the world below the clouds. 

He felt small hands on his shoulders and spun his body in the lake to see the girl from the shadows smiling at him. “Wake up?” she asked, and then with the force of a tidal wave, she pushed him below.

Kun swallowed a lungful of water in his surprise, and choking on it only made him swallow more. They sank, and sank, and sank, the girl’s weight like a boulder that Kun struggled against in vain. He was drowning. 

They both were.

At the bottom of the lake, no light reached. 

.

Kun awoke with cry, panting and drenched in cold sweat. He was alone in bed, and he felt an acute sense of loss at the absence of something or someone beside him, but he searched his mind for what was missing, and he couldn’t think of it.

.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thank you for reading. please let me know what you think by leaving kudos and a comment <3 hope to be back with the final (?) part, maybe in a couple of months.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please share your comments and kudos, thank you!
> 
> [my twitter](https://twitter.com/andnowforyaya) | [my cc](http://curiouscat.me/andnowforyaya)


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